Standards and Labels of Household Appliances as an Opportunity to Reduce CO2 Emissions

The Italian commitment to reduce GHG emissions according to the Kyoto protocol requirements includes measures in the industry — domestic sectors aiming to increase energy saving using as well standards and voluntary agreements. In particular, domestic appliances could present a consistent potential for energy saving. The EC energy label could represent a way both for pushing the market towards more energy efficient domestic appliances and for the monitoring of adopted or proposed measure. This paper summarise the work done to construct a preliminary model of the Italian stock of refrigerators from 1989 to 2000, with projections to 2010. Data since the year 1980 are needed, according to the adopted methodology. The stock is characterised according to the parameters of the EC energy label, i.e. refrigerator category, related adjusted volume and energy efficiency class. Data on refrigerators sold each year are used to construct the model, which, of course, defines also the overall number of refrigerators in use each year. Because the energy label is in use since 1995, previous years data are not directly based on label parameters, so that, besides retrieving the data, also some elaboration work is needed. This hopefully will be refined in the next future, with the cooperation of the organisations which the data belongs to.