The European Ecolabel is a voluntary scheme, established in 1992 to encourage businesses to market environmentally friendly products and services. Today the EU Ecolabel covers a wide range of products and services, with further groups being continuously added. Product groups include cleaning products, appliances, paper products, textile and home and garden products, lubricants and services such as tourist accommodation. For heating systems, an ecolabel already exists for heat pumps.
EU Ecolabel and Green Public Procurement for Heating Systems
A pilot study on heating systems is currently being carried out by the Joint Research Centre's Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS). The work is being developed for the European Commission's Directorate General for the Environment.
The purpose of this pilot project is to develop a joint evidence base from which EU policy making in the area of heating systems can be developed. In this project, EU Ecolabel and Green Public Procurement criteria will be devised for heating systems. In addition, the evidence base will gather information and data to assist the potential future development of other environmental policy instruments such as Implementing Measures under the Ecodesign Directive. However, Implementing Measures for heating systems will not be developed as part of this project now but might be introduced in future.
The development of a joint evidence base to inform the development of the three different policy instruments (Ecolabel, GPP and Ecodesign) is in line with the approach of the European Commission to ensure policy coherence and compatibility and to improve efficiency.
