The Commission has adopted a new regulation to improve the energy performance of external power supplies, which is expected to cut their electricity losses by nearly a third by 2020. The resulting savings of 9 TWh is enough to power Lithuania for a year and will reduce annual CO2 emissions by more than three million tonnes.

"This ecodesign measure will drastically improve the energy performance of external power supplies, which everybody uses together with many household and office products. Setting ambitious energy performance requirements for products is an important contribution to improving Europe's energy efficiency," said Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs.

The regulation sets requirements for the energy efficiency of external power supplies. They convert power input from the mains power source into lower voltage output for household and office products such as mobile and cordless phones, notebook computers, modems etc. The requirements address both the "active" efficiency, i.e. the efficiency when power is supplied to for example a notebook when being actually used, and the "no-load" power consumption, i.e. the power which the supply still uses when for instance the notebook is not plugged in.

These requirements come into force in two steps in 2010 and 2011, and correspond to internationally recognised efficiency criteria, which are achieved by models with significantly enhanced efficiency compared to a current average model.