Now that the Commission has published the Ecodesign working document for 2012-2014, our minds should be focussing more on how products can become more energy efficient.
Noah Sachs recently published an article in Vanderbilt Law Review entitled “Can We Regulate Our Way to Energy Efficiency? Product Standards as Climate Policy.” In the United States, regulation is now our dominant climate policy, as market-based approaches such as carbon taxes and cap-and-trade are off the agenda. The European Union, through its Ecodesign Directive, is also directly regulating the energy consumption of a wide variety of products such as lighting, motors, refrigerators, and televisions. Other jurisdictions are also regulating product performance and energy consumption to slow the rise in GHG emissions.
This article examines the prospects for product regulation as a climate policy tool and argues that this form of regulation should be expanded, not abandoned. For the sustainable energy community, this is a welcome message.
The article can be found here.
Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 