EU Member States showed their support for new rules to reduce the electricity consumption of industrial motors - which will save the equivalent of Sweden's electricity consumption each year - during today's Ecodesign Regulatory Committee meeting. The Regulation is expected to create 40,000 new jobs and make electricity savings of €9 billion by 2020.

"The measure is a concrete contribution to reach the EU's energy efficiency and climate protection targets and will result very quickly in significant energy savings and benefits for the society and industry, as foreseen in the European Economic Recovery Plan," said Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs.

The Regulation will forbid the placing on the market of motors below standard IE2 efficiency by 2011 and will allow only highly-efficient IE3 motors for big motors from 2015 and for all other motors from 2017. As an alternative, standard efficiency IE2 motors can continue to be sold after 2015 if they are put into service with variable speed drives. A drive allows adapting the speed of a motor according to the needs to ensure optimal efficiency. The use of drives leads to drastic savings in energy consumption when motors run in variable speed and load applications.

The legislation will lead to annual use-phase electricity consumption savings (EU-27) of about 135 TWh by 2020, corresponding to an annual reduction of 63 Mt of CO2 emissions. These savings correspond to about the annual electricity consumption of Sweden.

The three-staged approach allows all manufacturers, in particular small and medium enterprises, to adapt to the new requirements. The Regulation builds on the results of an in-depth analysis of the technical, economic and environmental aspects of industrial motors, which was carried out together with stakeholders and experts from around the world.