The New South African Standards and Labelling Programme for Residential Appliances

The South African government started the development of a basic energy efficiency policy framework in 2005, including a voluntary label for refrigerators. In November 2014, the South African government finally published mandatory performance standards coming into force in 2015/16 for a first set of appliances consisting of refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, electric water heaters, ovens, A/C and heat pumps. To analyse the effectiveness of the new standard and labelling programme and the potential influence of delays in the implementing process, the authors Thomas Götz, Lena Tholen, Thomas Adisorn (all Wuppertal Institute) and Theodore Covary (Unlimited Energy, South Africa) performed an immediate first-hand evaluation of the new policy. Even though the study does not asses the direct transferability of the programme to other regions, its findings could be relevant and useful for countries planning the implementation of similar policies.

The paper was part of the session "Standards and Labelling Programme Evaluation" of the International Energy Policy & Programme Evaluation Conference (IEPPEC). It is available for download on the conference website.