EPREL – European Product Registry for Energy Labelling
Established under the 2017 Energy Labelling Framework Regulation, the EPREL registry has been operational since 2019, when thousands of suppliers begun registering household, commercial and industrial products newly placed on the market which are required to have an EU energy label: from light bulbs to fuel boilers, domestic, commercial and industrial refrigerators, washing machines or vehicle tyres (about 30 product types).
With detailed information on over 1,5 million products, the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL) breaks new ground in helping EU consumers become more energy efficient.
The Energy Labelling Framework Regulation (Art 7(2)) says that “Where Member States provide incentives for a product specified in a delegated act, those incentives shall aim at the highest two significantly populated classes of energy efficiency, or at higher classes as laid down in that delegated act.”
The same criterion is increasingly used in other EU legislation, e.g. in public procurement criteria under the Energy Efficiency Directive, or in eligibility for reduced VAT for heating systems under the VAT directive. The EU Taxonomy uses the same wording. Via application programming interfaces (API), EPREL can provide parameter values on thousands of products: e.g. vehicle manufacturers can get data on all tyres for their calculations required to comply with emissions legislation. EPREL can help operationalize such policies in a very objective and efficient manner by providing un unparalleled and transparent real-time tool for understanding how products on the EU market are distributed across efficiency classes at any given point in time and for providing parameter values instrumental in seeking compliance for a number of different regulatory frameworks.
Main aspects in short
EPREL is a major step forward in “digitalising” and streamlining Energy Labelling. The benefits are already starting to be seen for online retailing, for market surveillance, for manufacturers to keep an eye on the competition or for getting data of components to be selected, for public procurers to calibrate expectations and streamline verification, for public authorities to target incentives efficiently.
For consumers EPREL now offers tools to search, select, sort the best available products on the market. On top of energy-related parameter values, a number of additional parameters are available, ranging from products dimensions, to emitted noise or water consumption, to links to user manuals, repair instructions, spare part costs or suppliers support but also very specific information such as chromaticity coordinates, spectral power distribution graphs or flicker metrics in light bulbs or fuel efficiency data in tyres.
Key interlocutors
Manufacturers, particularly those established in the Union, have since long supported the energy labels, as a tool to provide transparency to the consumers and stimulate a fair competition to have the newly designed products appear in the highest classes of energy efficiency.
Some SMEs may be concerned about the complexity of registering products. The retail sector appreciate EPREL as a tool facilitiating compliance with requirements notably in online/e-commerce. Member State Authorities (MSAs) have now an invaluable resource to carry out their duties, and also “crowdsource” suspicious/erroneous registrations from consumers or competitors via the “report a problem” feature on the public interface.