This document provides a feasibility assessment to determine if harmonization of environmental performance criteria is possible and would benefit the electrotechnical industry.

This document is intended as a feasibility study report rather than a standard. It reports the possibility/opportunity to harmonize environmental performance criteria and, with it, the feasibility for future development of an international standard on environmental performance criteria. The learnings and recommendations of this document are based on the review of a number of prominent ecolabel standards available worldwide as well as outreach discussions with internal and external stakeholders.

To enable users of this document to visualize and better evaluate what such a future standard could look like, a concept for an international standard on harmonized criteria for environmental performance assessment of electrotechnical products has been proposed in Clause 8. It is not intended as a final proposal but rather a vision of how such a standard would be structured and how it could be implemented to meet the specific requirements that were identified in the study.

Once again, it is important to emphasize that the potential IEC standard on environmental performance criteria is not intended as an ecolabel standard, but it is intended to be a means for harmonization of the criteria (including the verification requirements of them) that are needed for creating such an ecolabel standard.