From left: Head of the Regional Project Team of the Energy Efficiency Labeling Standards, Erwin Edwards; Ulrich Harmes-Liedtke, Consultant with the German Metrology Institute; and Anthea Ishmael, acting Director of the Barbados National Standards Institute, at the Regional Policy Roadmap Workshop that was held at Divi Southwinds yesterday morning.
Erwin Edwards, Head of the Regional Project Team of the Energy Efficiency Labelling Standards, believes that having standards on appliances are a necessity.
His comments came during a brief interview with the media following the Regional Policy Roadmap Workshop that was held at Divi Southwinds Hotel yesterday morning.
“The reality is that you need standards for development because we need to develop in a structured way and in a way that we can reproduce what we have achieved,” he said.
Edwards believes that it is time for different countries to tap into the various technologies and technical expertise that are available, so that they could develop and implement standards for various appliances.
CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) Technical Officer, Fulgence St. Prix, revealed that they planned to spend the first day of the three-day conference discussing and planning energy efficiency standards and labelling standards, which are to be part of CROSQ’s Implemented Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Project (R3E).
“On the second day of the workshop, energy
experts will sit together and plan a Roadmap to determine the steps to the development and implementation of a labelling scheme for refrigerators, lighting and room air conditioners,” he said.
Meanwhile, Edwards is of the opinion that persons do not truly understand the importance of standards and expressed that when a person spends Bds$3 000 on a piece of equipment, they expect it to work and to last for an appropriate length of time. He noted that buying the cheapest piece of equipment is not beneficial if you have to pay every day for it to be serviced or replace something in the equipment that has broken down.
He believes that this could be avoided if persons were aware of the standards attached to these different pieces of equipment. Edwards said that some standards were not easily understood by the public and that implementing standards that sought to encourage making the labelling reader-friendly, would help them to understand the standards that come with the piece of the equipment they are purchasing.