27/01/2020

On January 10, the NDRC issued a call for comments on the Catalogue of the 15th batch of products subject to the Energy Efficiency Labelling (hereinafter, the “15th Catalogue”) and the implementation rules for energy efficiency labelling of these products. The deadline for public consultation is February 9, 2020.

The 15th Catalogue contains eight kinds of products, including air conditioners units, room air conditioners, LED products for indoor lighting, permanent magnet synchronous motors, air purifiers, LED lamps for road and tunnel lighting, air conditioner duct units, and low ambient temperature air-source heat pumps (cold water) units, among which the latter five kinds of products are the new products included in the energy efficiency labelling scope. As a result, there have been 38 kinds of products (hereinafter, the “energy efficiency products”) by now that need to have the Energy Efficiency Label affixed to them before being put on the market. Accordingly, 38 mandatory national standards have been adopted for the energy efficiency evaluation and grading. Implementation rules for energy efficiency labelling (hereinafter, the “implementation rules”) of air conditioner units, LED products for indoor lighting, permanent magnet synchronous motors, air purifiers, LED lamps for road and tunnel lighting, air conditioning duct units, and low ambient temperature air-source heat pumps (cold water) units will come into force on May 1, 2020, while for the products manufactured or imported before May 1, 2020, the effective date can be postponed until May 1, 2021. Implementation rules for energy efficiency labelling of room air conditioners will come into force on July 1, 2020, while for the products manufactured or imported before July 1, 2020, the effective date can be postponed until July 1, 2021.

SESEC Observation:

  1. In order to facilitate energy-saving, the Chinese government is almost certain to keep identifying more products with energy-saving potential and include them in the scope of energy efficiency labelling. Accordingly, more GB standards will be developed to support the evaluation and labelling of these energy efficiency products.
  2. As the Enterprise Standard “Top-runners” evaluation system was brought into service in mid-2018, new implementation rules released since then stipulate that energy efficiency products’ Energy Efficiency Labels shall include “Top-runners” information. This will not only facilitate the development of the “Top-runners” project but will obviously give a competitive advantage to the products or enterprises participating in the “Top-runners” evaluation. However, participating in the “Top-runners” evaluation means enterprises will have to publicize their enterprise standards and to some extent, their products’ technical indicators or parameters, which has long been avoided by foreign companies due to this information always being seen as their commercial secrets. Since this argument is not likely to convince the Chinese government to remove the “Top-runners”-related clauses in the implementation rules , European stakeholders should put more efforts on exploring reasonable measures to influence the development of the “Top-runners” project towards a fairer direction.