Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-31-Speech-3-184"
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"en.20010131.9.3-184"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to echo the thanks extended to the rapporteur, Mrs McNally, but also to Mrs Emilia Müller, the rapporteur of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy. Saving energy and reducing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are important EU goals. It is not always possible to achieve these goals without effort and without sacrificing certain comforts, but sometimes it is quite a simple matter. Sometimes, all it takes is to deploy the technical means, which are already in existence, yet people do not always have the political will to do this with any vigour.
Eleven per cent of electricity consumption in private households in the country I come from, Germany, is caused by standby losses. Add to that the private and public spheres and the losses total 20 TWh per year, which corresponds to the output of two large power stations that we are simply running for no purpose. So although no demands are made on the capacity of the piece of equipment, it still consumes energy. Now of course the easiest thing to do – as Mrs McNally has already said – would be to switch the piece of equipment off when it is not in use. That would be one way of resolving the problem in many spheres, for example, we should simply do more to encourage the public to get into this habit with their television sets. But in quite a few spheres, it is no longer possible to switch equipment off at all, and it is particularly important for computers, by their very nature, to quickly fall into ‘sleep mode’, as Mrs McNally puts it, and also ‘wake up’ instantaneously, because you sometimes need to be able to log onto a computer straightaway, and do not want to have to slowly coax it into life.
There are technical problems to be dealt with, but they can in fact be solved by technical means, without wasting energy. There are new and innovative techniques designed to reduce the no-load losses almost to zero; they just have to be incorporated. None of this is problematic from a technical viewpoint any longer. That is why it is a positive thing to be discussing the Energy Star scheme and to label equipment that incorporates these new technical possibilities and is highly energy-efficient. It is the right way to go, which is why the PPE-DE Group supports the Commission’s proposal, as well as the report by Mrs McNally.
However, I feel we need to go further still. When I took on the responsibility as shadow rapporteur for the PPE-DE Group, I made enquiries of experts in the various organisations, non-governmental organisations, Ministries and in the Commission, but I also asked people who are confronted with this issue on a daily basis, for example a computer dealer who is a friend of mine. I asked him what he thought of Energy Star and he replied that he thought it was a good thing. He said there were technical problems to begin with, because the computers went into ‘sleep mode’ alright, but failed to ‘wake up’ again quickly enough. He felt that although we have now solved all the technical problems, no one is interested in whether or not a computer has an Energy Star, and he did not think it was a selling point. That is why I think we should consider whether or not we should just apply the principle we are advocating here, i.e. giving highly efficient equipment a positive label, or whether we should also aim to rid the market of the worst offending products, which are highly inefficient, and simply refuse to allow them access to the market after a transitional period. I feel that is something else to think about – Mrs McNally’s report makes the same point – and then we would have a comprehensive energy efficiency programme in this sphere. Hence my appeal to you to adopt these amendments."@en1
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