Proposed changes to regulation of chillers

The Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Energy and New Zealand’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) have consulted with industry on the regulation of liquid chilling packages (chillers) on behalf of the Equipment Energy Efficiency Committee (E3) under the Council of Australian Governments’ (COAG) Energy Council.

As discussed in Chillers: Updated Policy Positions and previous papers, chillers are not being registered correctly under the Greenhouse and Energy Minimum Standards Act 2012 (the GEMS Act) and it is difficult for regulators to ensure compliance with the existing determination. This situation is complicated by the nature of chillers as bespoke equipment and by the way chillers are supplied to the market.

The standard approach applied under the E3 Program to registration and compliance has proven to have limited effectiveness with chillers and the setting of minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) is based on an obsolete test standard, which is unique to Australia and New Zealand.

E3 considers that many of the problems with regulating chillers are due to the challenges in regulating bespoke commercial and industrial equipment. E3’s proposed solution is to harmonise Australian and New Zealand requirements with the major international certification programs and standards for chillers to make it easier for manufacturers and importers of chillers to comply with Australian and New Zealand requirements. The updated policy positions outline how E3 proposes this approach would work, the MEPS that E3 will recommend to the COAG Energy Council, the process for the development of a new determination covering chillers, and the scope of such a determination.

The paper is available to download here. Responses to the paper can be emailed to [email protected] by Friday, February 1.