Proposal 14

Update Ecodesign Directive from 2009 setting tight limits to resource and energy waste of all connected devices including antennas and satellites.

Detailed explanation

The launch of 5G is expected to bring a plethora of new interconnected devices to the market, most of which will replace their predecessors. Thus, the cycle of buying new and disposing of old is being significantly boosted. Instead of reducing environmental impact and saving energy there would be a whole new industry building thousands of satellites, new generations of an exploding amount of antennas, electronic devices like hundreds of millions of mobile phones, tablets and so on.

The Ecodesign Directive 2009/125/EC is a directive under European law that sets requirements for the environment-related design of "energy-related products" (ErP) in the common internal market of the European Union.

The 2009 revision of the Directive extended its scope to energy-related products such as windows, insulation materials and certain water-using products.

The ultimate aim of the Ecodesign Directive is that manufacturers of energy-using products (EuP) will, at the design stage, be obliged to reduce the energy consumption and other negative environmental impacts of products. While the Directive's primary aim is to reduce energy use, it is also aimed at taking other environmental factors into consideration: materials use, water use, polluting emissions, waste issues and recyclability. To date, more than 40 products fall under this directive.

We call on the EU Commission to include all device groups that accompany digitalization, especially those listed in the first paragraph, into the Ecodesign Directive in order to improve their energy and resource efficiency as well as their energy security and reduction in demand for natural resources.

According to the EU’s new Circular Economy Action Plan, all electronic devices, especially those, which are used for digitalisation, should also be made "fit for a climate-neutral, resource-efficient and circular economy, reduce waste and ensure that the performance of front-runners in sustainability progressively becomes the norm" The Ecodesign Directive is a possible connecting point for these objectives.

Please always consider that wired connections offer enormous energy savings compared to Wi-Fi without sacrificing comfort.

EU is competent to protect the environment via the precautionary principle in article 191 in the TFEU.