Online stores ’not providing adequate energy information’

Online stores and retailers lag behind traditional shops and retailers in providing the right information in the right format about the energy performance of domestic appliances, according to the Energy Saving Trust.

An EU-funded product surveillance programme, MarketWatch, which is managed by the EST, found that 62 per cent of products in the online stores and retailers that were checked had information missing about energy consumption and performance on the energy label. Thirty-eight per cent of products in online shops and retailers were correctly labelled.

In UK online stores and retailers that were checked, 90 per cent of products had energy information missing or displayed in the wrong format.

These figures were in a stark contrast to traditional shops and retailers, with 77 per cent of products across Europe being correctly labelled. The shops checked in the UK had even higher figures, with 80 per cent of products correctly labelled in traditional shops and retailers.

Of encouragement for UK online stores and retailers was that all of the products that were checked had some form of information provided about their energy performance.

These findings are based on 225 shop visits (114 traditional shops and retailers and 111 online stores and retailers) on 68,000 different energy-using products across Europe as part of MarketWatch. In the UK over 700 products were assessed across eight online stores and retailers.

Energy Saving Trust says it will work with online shops and retailers to address this “energy information gap” and ensure that the full and correct information is provided on products. This is timely, with the introduction of the new online Energy Labelling Regulation – taking affect from 1st January 2015 – which will ensure all new products placed on the market supply the actual energy label online.

Tom Lock, product certification manager at the Energy Saving Trust, said: “The biggest problem is missing information on the label or information in the wrong format which means consumers are either confused or not fully-informed before they make a purchasing decision. This was a particularly big problem for online retailers, with nearly two-thirds of products displayed in the shops we checked not containing the half a dozen vital pieces of information about energy performance.”