In Budget 2006, the Government announced a new voluntary initiative with major retailers and the Energy Saving Trust to encourage the purchase of more energy efficient consumer electronics.
The Government would like retailers to agree to procure and sell products that meet the indicative energy efficiency standards developed by MTP. These standards are determined by the necessary market average energy consumption of a product to meet product policy goals. The standards are only indicative. However, every product sold by the retailer need not fall within the standards for that retailer to achieve an overall ‘Green' rating, so long as their sales-weighted ‘EcoPoints' score is positive.
To facilitate the delivery of these standards, MTP has produced the Red/Green Calculator Tool. The Red/Green Calculator enables retailers to test, easily, if individual products or a basket of goods would meet current or future Government efficiency targets. Users enter details of their product range (including the energy consumption of each product) and the tool translates the technical standards into a simple result: green for products, or a basket of goods, that exceed average performance levels for any given year and red when these standards are not met.
The Red/Green Calculator for consumer electronics covers televisions, set-top boxes, DVD players, DVD/video recorders and external power supply units. The Tool adopts an ‘EcoPoints' approach to the annual energy consumption of these products, incorporating usage profiles to attribute each product an EcoPoints score. A positive score for a product means that its annual energy consumption is within Government indicative standards and this product is assigned a ‘Green' or ‘G' flag. A negative EcoPoints score means that the product will consume more energy in one year than Government standards, and generates a ‘Red' or ‘R' rating.
The EcoPoints scores are then totalled for each product area, giving an overall score for televisions, set-top boxes, etc., to give an overall picture of the efficiency of the product area for that retailer. Finally, the product area scores can be totalled to arrive at an overall EcoPoints score for the retailer for consumer electronics. Please note, that it is not our intention for EcoPoints or the ‘R' and ‘G' rating system to form the basis for a Red/Green labelling scheme.
The Red/Green Calculator, and supporting documentation, can be accessed by clicking here:
Please note that the site is password protected, and that use of the Red/Green Calculator is granted on a partnership approach.