EU directive on energy-using products could force monumental changes

[jpak]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/31/45OPreality_1.html

EuP: The coming regulation storm

Sleeper EU eco-design directive due out this summer will cause monumental changes

’ve written about two European Union directives before, WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) and RoHS (Restrictions on the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment) in late 2004 and in late 2005. Both directives are having a huge impact on products produced and/or imported and sold anywhere in the European Union. But if you thought they had a big impact, wait until you hear about E.U. directive 2005/32/EC otherwise known as a directive on every EuP (energy-using product).

The E.U., a bureaucracy that perhaps even overshadows our own, set a date of July 6, 2007, to put the directive in place. Its goal is “establishing a framework for the setting of eco-design requirements for energy-using products .”

EuP will require manufacturers to calculate the energy used to produce, transport, sell, use, and dispose of almost every one of its products. It will require that the manufacturer go all the way back to the energy used when extracting the raw materials to make its product, including all subassemblies and components. And in time, it will set limits on a product-by-product basis of how much energy can be used in a product’s entire lifecycle.

One analyst group, Tetra Tech, in a fact sheet, explains it this way: “The scope of the directive is very wide, being potentially applicable to any energy-using product … it applies to all energy sources, although it is likely that only those using electricity or solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels will be subject to implementing measures.”

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[eppur_se_muova]

1. Finally, a TRUE bottom-line mentality -- a shame it's always so much work to do things right, but

isn't that just the human condition? No need to paint it as the bogeyman of "beauracracy".

[skids]

2. I hope it's a resounding success.

If it is, it will be just as annoying to the politicos here as, say, the resoundingly successful Canadian hemp industry.