The British technology firm Dyson is asking the European court to throw out a large chunk of the EU’s energy efficiency legislation following accusations that rival firms are misleading customers over the way their products operate.
Dyson, headed by the British engineer James Dyson, is seeking to quash the EU’s regulation for vacuum cleaners at the European court of justice.
The court is expected to deliver a verdict next Wednesday morning.
Dyson launched its suit against the European commission last year, arguing that its current eco-label tests mislead consumers about real-world energy performance and add to environmental damage.
Details of the action, which could have devastating implications for Europe’s product efficiency plans, have not been made public before.
It comes amid claims from the company last month that rivals Bosch and Siemens were misleading customers about the energy efficiency of their products.
In a statement, the company said: “Dyson is asking the court to determine that the [energy labelling] regulation should be annulled or, as a minimum, that the parts of the regulation relating to the measurement of cleaning performance of vacuum cleaners and energy efficiency should be annulled.”
A court spokesperson said that if the firm’s suit is successful, then “the court simply annuls the regulation or parts of it without giving any further order, recommendation or advice.”
“This is about consumers having the wool pulled over their eyes by a label which is supposed to inform them,” Dyson told the Guardian: “The regulations state that machines are tested without dust, and therefore they favour bagged machines and allow manufacturers to engineer machines that use different amounts of energy in the home as compared to the lab.”
But energy efficiency campaigners are dismayed. “Dyson has a good point but it is pushing it too far if it asks for cancellation of the entire EU energy labelling regulation,” said a spokesman for the energy-saving campaign group, coolproducts.
“Lets not throw out the baby with the bathwater,” a recent blog post on the group’s website pleaded. “The system isn’t perfect, there are a few rotten apples, but the benefits of these rules is (sic) massive.”
Contrary to tabloid claims, EU eco-design rules have made vacuum cleaners 63% more efficient and will cut household energy bills by €3bn (£2bn) a year by 2020, according to the European commission. Without such standards, consumers would have to rely on self-declared energy evaluations by manufacturers.
Spokespeople for Dyson, which manufactures bagless vacuum cleaners, insist that they are strong supporters of energy labelling and eco-design requirements. But they say they want to reduce the 126m European vacuum sacks that are trashed in landfill sites each year.
Dyson argues that the performance of bag-using vacuums drops as their sacks fill up, but that the EU only tests cleaners with empty bags. Consumers are thus misled as to the real world performance of their machines, the firm contends.
EU officials are said to be hopeful that the company’s suit will result in a reform of the rules for vacuum cleaner testing.
“I don’t think this case will lead to the cancellation of the current standard, but it could lead to a finer definition of the measurement standard,” one Brussels source said. “The commission was anyway considering changing its measurements to better reflect real life use of vacuum cleaning bags, so that could be an outcome.”
Last month, Dyson launched a separate suit against its competitors Bosch and Siemens, alleging that their cleaners used more than 1,600W of power in a home setting – 850W more than their rating. This was because their machines ran at lower power settings in EU tests, Dyson claimed.
The allegations sparked threats of a counter-suit by the German manufacturer BSH Hausgeräte, which makes household appliances under the Bosch and Siemens brands.
The EU has already proposed a makeover for the bloc’s energy labelling laws, with a clear A-G scale rating energy usage and a digital database for new products.
But Dyson pledged that failure in the Court of Justice next week would not be the end of his struggle for legislative reform. “Since I launched Dyson’s first vacuum cleaner 22 years ago, we have battled test standards that don’t reveal the real-world performance of technology,” he said. “Whatever the result of the judicial review, we will continue to do so.”
