Environmental Screening and Evaluation of Energy-using Products (EuP) Final Report
16 Laundry driers (Lot 16)
- 16.1 Background
- 16.2 Environmental screening based on the Ecoinvent database
- 16.3 Ecolabel requirements
- 16.4 Technology and market trends
- 16.5 Conclusion
16.1 Background
The EuP project group for laundry driers is new and there are no background documents available at present.
16.2 Environmental screening based on the Ecoinvent database
As there are no data in the Ecoinvent database for this theme, an environmental screening has not been performed for this product group.
16.3 Ecolabel requirements
It has not been possible to identify relevant Ecolabel criteria for this product group.
The best laundry driers in Europe include the most energy efficient household electric tumble driers. In order to be selected, the energy class according to the EU energy label must be A. In general, only heat pump tumble driers attain Class A. Two tumble drier categories are presented on top ten: Driers for residential use designed for one apartment and driers for semi professional use, designed for several apartments, with a load of about 5 times the load of residential driers.
16.4 Technology and market trends
Dryers are the appliance where little progresses in energy efficiency have been achieved with the mandatory energy label (Directive 95/13/EC) [EU1995]. In theory, gas heated (which are not labelled) and heat pump dryers (most of them are in A class and tend to be much more expensive than conventional models), which use much less primary energy, are already on the market, but have almost no market share (with the exception of gas dryers in the UK). Transforming the dryer market to A-label machines will save a lot of energy (for the Netherlands alone calculated savings would be in the magnitude of 0,8 PJ per year). [EIS2006]
Laundry (tumble) drier use in European countries has increased considerably: in 2005, 4.9 million tumble driers for residential use were sold in the EU. Strong differences exist between Western Europe (4.84 million) and Eastern Europe (0.06 million), as well as between northern and southern countries. The market in Northern Europe is, however, not expected to show large growth rates in the coming years, partly due to saturation as shown in Figure 16.1.
![Figure 16.1 West European Market saturation of tumble dryers 2005 (Source: [Bus2007])](images/s124.gif)
Figure 16.1 West European Market saturation of tumble dryers 2005 (Source: [Bus2007])
High-efficiency heat pump driers consume only about half the electricity of conventional condenser driers. Their efficiency exceeds the EU A-label threshold by far, while usual resistance heating machines are hardly better than energy label Class C. There are an estimated 40 million tumble driers in European households. Replacing the entire stock by high-efficiency heat pump driers represents a savings potential of approximately 15 TWh per year. This corresponds to annual savings of more than 6 million tons of carbon dioxide (assuming an electricity generation mix with a CO2 intensity of 400 g CO2/kWh).
The technical and market development of heat pump driers on the Swiss market was described in a paper by Bush and Nipkow [Bus2006]. In 2001, the first heat pump drier in Switzerland was launched. In the meantime, many open questions about heat pump driers could be clarified, and laboratory tests and evaluations of consumer satisfaction have lead to improvements in the handling and overall performance of all models available on the Swiss market.
Heat pump tumble driers result in significant energy savings, and, with market shares below 5 %, the potential aggregated energy savings in Europe are huge. Furthermore, wasted heat and humidity loss in the operation room are significantly lower compared to air condenser driers, and there is no smelling and steaming exhaust air as with conventional air vented driers. Life cycle costs are hardly higher than with conventional driers and even significantly lower in the case of semi-professional use – due to 50 % energy savings.
The city of Zurich launched a rebate program in 2005 to encourage the purchase of heat pump driers and thereby their market uptake on the national level. From 2004 to 2005, the market share of heat pump driers in Switzerland increased from 1.7 % to 4.4 %.
16.5 Conclusion
Dryers are the appliance where little progresses in energy efficiency have been achieved with the mandatory energy label. Gas heated (which are not labelled) and heat pump dryers (most of them are in A class), which use much less primary energy should be promoted.
16.5.1 Environmental perspective from new technologies
Heat pump tumble driers result in significant energy savings as they consume only about half the electricity of conventional condenser driers.
Version 1.0 December 2009, © Danish Environmental Protection Agency