The Top Runner policy concept: Pass it down?

Panel: Panel 6: Products and appliances

Author:
Joakim Nordqvist, Environmental and Energy Systems Studies, Lund University, Sweden

Abstract

In the 1990s, Japanese energy regulators were concerned by the fact that new generations of energy using appliances and products no longer displayed successive use-phase energy efficiency improvements, such as those that characterised product development in Japan after the 1970s oil crises. Therefore, in 1999, Japan incepted its Top Runner programme, designed to rejuvenate the lost momentum. Several years into the scheme, the programme, as a whole, seems generally to be perceived as successful by Japanese stakeholders.

The approach now attracts increasing attention outside of its country of origin. In 2005, the German Bundestag assigned to the federal government the task of promoting Top Runner policies also in Europe. However, the suitableness of the strategy is under debate, one reason being claims of potential conflicts with existing energy efficiency programmes.

Adopting a comparative stance, this presentation notes that Top Runner concept discussed in Europe and the original Japanese programme display fundamental differences. As in a game of Chinese whispers or Pass it down – where receivers of information interpret fragmented input by filling out gaps in ways that need not be in accordance at all with the original message – the Top Runner policy concept seems to have undergone significant change on its way from Japan to Germany. Nominally alike, the two approaches diverge on many accounts, for example in their implicit assumptions about stakeholder roles and responsibilities. Expounding on such variances this paper analyzes arguments from the debate about prospects for European Top Runner policies.