Background

The EU legislation on Ecodesign and energy labelling aim at improving the energy efficiency of products. It helps eliminate the least performing products from the market, contributing to the EU’s 2020 energy efficiency objective.

The Ecodesign Directive provides consistent EU-wide rules for improving the environmental performance of products, such as household appliances, information and communication technologies or engineering. The Directive sets out minimum mandatory requirements for the energy efficiency of these products.

Bioenergy installations

When it comes to biomass installations, two groups of products are subject to eco-design requirements:

• Solid fuel boilers with a rated heat output of 500 kW or less (Eco-design Directive Lot 15)
• Local space heaters with a nominal heat output of 50 kW or less (Eco-design Directive Lot 20)

The directives impose energy efficiency requirements, as well as emission limit values for OGC, CO, NOx and PM.

The same groups of biomass products are subject to eco-labelling requirements:

• Solid fuel boilers with a rated heat output of 70 kW or less (Energy Labelling Regulation Lot 15)
• Local space heaters with a nominal heat output of 50 kW or less (Energy Labelling Regulation Lot 20)

Our position

In order to ensure a decarbonised heating and cooling sector and reduce the level of emissions from the residential sector as soon as possible, it is crucial to foster the replacement of the old and inefficient existing stock of heating installations with highly efficient biomass stoves and boilers.