EDIT: FRANCE LAUNCHES VOLUNTARY LABEL FOR INSTALLED HEATING APPLIANCES (“MON ETIQUETTE CHAUDIÈRE”)

The French associations Coénove and Energies et Avenir – in close cooperation with UNICLIMA, an EHI member – have jointly launched an energy label for heating appliances already installed in buildings. The label aims to encourage consumers to retrofit old and inefficient heating appliances.

How will the label achieve that? By raising consumers’ awareness: old heating appliances are often inefficient. New appliances can bring sizable energy savings and reduce CO2 emissions. The label will be delivered to people in the framework of a project with professional installers; the project has the goal to provide all owners of oil and gas boilers, installed before 2015, with clear and objective information on the energy performance of their installed equipment. Such information will be primarily based on the methodology of the EU energy efficiency label for new heaters.

In practice, a professional installer will be able to generate and download an energy label for the relevant installed appliance from the project website – for instance during maintenance visits or remotely from a smartphone or computer. The classification of the label will range from A (best performer) to D (worst performer). To generate the label, it will suffice to indicate the year of the boiler, the type of energy used, the brand, the technology (condensation or not), and the building type (single house or apartment complex). The French initiative is closely related to the European HARP Project (Heating Appliances Retrofit Planning; co-funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research fund).

Please note that this project is the result of a joint initiative of the two French associations Coénove and Energies et Avenir and remains therefore completely voluntary. For more information watch this space: the project website will soon be launched.