Power cut T
he European Union’s Eco Design Directive “establishes a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for energy-related products” offered for sale in the EU. Machine tools were part of the directive’s working plan for 2009-2011. Already covered by the directive are electric motors, for example, which meant that, in the UK, minimum efficiency requirements (IE2) for electric motors came into force from 16 June 2011. Domestic appliances have also been subject to this directive, as well as its associated Energy Labelling Directive (energy efficiency ratings). The directive is
The improved energy efficiency of machine tools is captured in a new developing EU directive. Andrew Allcock explains what Europe’s machine tool builders are thinking and doing in an effort to influence its content
in keeping with the EU’s stated aim, as of March 2007, to reduce EU energy consumption by 20% by 2020. Europe’s machine tool association representative body CECIMO (The European Association of Machine Tool Industries) adopted German mechanical engineering association VDMA’s Blue Competence model, launching at the European level its Blue Competence Machine Tools initiative last year, in February (described fully here
www.machinery.co.uk/41251). A company that wants to participate in the initiative has to meet pre-defined sustainability criteria in its production and
CECIMO director general Filip Geerts announces the Blue Competence Machine Tools initiative in February 2012
business practices, and so makes a public commitment to add value to the economy, environment and society. Such companies can subsequently highlight to their customers and to the public that they are an alliance member of the Blue Competence Machine Tools initiative. This move follows, and complements,
CECIMO’s voluntary self-regulatory proposal (SRI) to the European Commission, which it prefers to imposed conditions via the directive, and which it kicked off in 2009 – “the self-regulation concept aims at respecting the potential of individual energy-efficiency measures and the freedom of innovation”, CECIMO offers. The organisation’s SRI approach is founded on functional modules – not a machine tool as a single entity, as in the case of a domestic appliance, for example. To be acceptable to the European Commission, such voluntary agreements by industry have to achieve the same objectives as binding legislation (more quickly and at less expense), include staged and quantified objectives, and be open to new participants. CECIMO’s SRI sets out to achieve this, of course. (Regardless of acceptance of CECIMO’s SRI, any directive will still have provisions for non-CECIMO machine tool makers that, like the Machinery Safety Directive before it, will call for compliance against various criteria.)
ELECTRICITY SHOCKER At the Blue Competence Machine Tools initiative launch, CECIMO director general Filip Geerts said that, according to a study, 96% of the environmental impact of a machine tool is in its use phase and that, within this, the consumption of electricity is the major factor. And, according to the EU Commission, industrial production accounted for 40% of total power
6 May 2013
www.machinery.co.uk
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