Nice page! I'm extremely happy about efforts like this. You might argue that the EU is a sprawling, wasteful bureaucracy and you would not be wrong, per se, but they made a lot of useful laws that just simply make the world a better place.
Having standardized chargers for phones and laptops is SUPER nice and would never have happened without intervention IMO.
The only equivalent for US "useful, average-citizen friendly legislation" that I recently heard about was the standardization of powertool batteries pursued by doge-- which turned out to be an april hoax when I just looked it up :(
And yet, only US has right-to-repair laws for cars. When is EU going to fix that?
I can't get manuals and software access to fix a new car made in EU.
I don't really care that I can't fix my all-glued-up phone for <1000 EUR but I do care that I have to spend thousands on car repairs that I could do myself.
This law has more to do with the environment/Energy usage than with the consumer. And the US consumer cares a lot less about energy usage since they're much more energy and monetarily rich than the EU.
If they paid German gas and electricity prices for example while having European wages, they'd care a lot more about energy consumption, believe that.
I think regulation like this is just strictly good (even from US perspective/priorities), because you can not realistically "vote with your wallet" for environment-friendly products when relevant info is obfuscated, falsified or not available at all.
Just ignoring energy efficiency/repairability labelling is always an option for consumers on the other hand.
> If they paid German gas and electricity prices for example while having European wages, they'd care a lot more.
I'm not so sure on this; I think environmental concerns are mainly culture driven I think, because even after all the price increases over the last decade, especially electricity is still dirt cheap compared to e.g. rent, basically everywhere.
>I think regulation like this is just strictly good (even from US perspective/priorities)
I never said it's bad, I was just answered why the EU is pushing for this when US isn't: because in US energy affordability is not as big of an issue for consumers.
The article talks about ecodesign requirements as well, such as spare parts needing to be available for some years after the product isn't sold, the freedom to have 3rd parties repair devices and so on. It's not only a matter of energy but consumer protection as well
I just checked the el. prices for Germany on [1] and [2] and I see something like 9-12 euro ct/kWh which is $0.10/kWh. In NY state [3], where I live, the prices right now are $0.25/kWh so 250% more. Average salaries for Germany are $57,198 [4] and $61,984 [5] for US. Maybe I'm missing some details about it but I don't it's about affordability and energy cost. My take is it's a lot more about top-down politics.
That's a good point. The numbers go the opposite way if you check household prices. Are prices in Germany anomalous due to them putting their eggs in the Russian gas basket? Countries with nuclear power plants seem to have lower electricity prices (who would've known).
In Germany, I think a big cost driver is infrastructure buildout, from switching coal plants to renewables as well as building new gas turbines, more so than gas price itself (which is <20% of electricity). But the country is already >60% renewables for electricity, so there is at least something to show for it.
France basically invested 40 years ago and are still reaping the spoils; I'd expect prices there to rise significantly once a majority of nuclear reactors reaches end-of-life.
From a household perspective the cost of electricity feels pretty marginal to me, anyway.
> this law has more to do with the environment/Energy usage than with the consumer
Not sure about the distinction there, improving the environment and energy usage is benefitting the consumer, because the consumer is also the citizen living there
> You might argue that the EU is a sprawling, wasteful bureaucracy and you would not be wrong, per se, but they made a lot of useful laws that just simply make the world a better place.
The EU bureaucracy itself is significantly lighter and more purposeful than any of the underlying individual states' bureaucracy, though that might simply be a function of youth and restricted scope.
> The EU bureaucracy itself is significantly lighter and more purposeful than any of the underlying individual states' bureaucracy
The EU ""states rights"" (subsidiarity) is a lot stronger and more real than the corresponding structures in the US. It also doesn't really do direct enforcement - there's no EU federal police checking tablets, it's all done through national level enforcement.
For Japan, I think allowing income tax redirection to a "home town" is a really good model to keep infrastructure funded in more rural areas that suffer from brain drain/exodus.
I'm not saying that you need laws to make the world better, just that some of them do.
This belongs in that category in my opinion because it is something that costs very little in absolute terms (manufacturer has to run some tests and print some numbers that they probably already had), but it makes the whole system work better because it enables people to vote with their wallet, and gets inefficient products eliminated because people can spot them before sale.
No company would advertise a "20% below average battery lifetime" without regulation like this, which is why objectively bad devices can still get sold easily on unregulated markets.
Sure. But even if this would be a full tradeoff between product performance and energy use (which it really isn't, you can typically eliminate a lot of power consumption without impacting performance at all in domestic appliances), than that would be already an improvement:
Without any energy labeling, the manufacturer has basically no incentive to provide any comparable information on energy use (especially if his device is subpar at it), and it's impossible for consumers to make informed decisions when buying (and very easy for extremely wasteful trash-products to get sold).
It also would be very appealing to just waste a ton of electricity for marginally better performance, because wasted electricity costs the device manufacturer nothing.
Having standardized chargers for phones and laptops is SUPER nice and would never have happened without intervention IMO.
The only equivalent for US "useful, average-citizen friendly legislation" that I recently heard about was the standardization of powertool batteries pursued by doge-- which turned out to be an april hoax when I just looked it up :(