A program of the Green Electronics Council
EPEAT Manufacturer Update: Jan. 28, 2014
In this issue
India Registration Opens
ENERGY STAR Changes
Product Category Change
Tablets Meeting Notes
Verification Updates
Purchaser Case Study
Ford Motor Company
 
Quick Links...
India Registration Now Available
As of this week, Subscribers may begin registering products in all product categories for India, EPEAT's 43rd covered country. Registry software now lists India as a country choice, and both ULE and EPEAT will be providing PRE services.

A public announcement of EPEAT's expansion to cover India will go out in the next week. For the next 60 days, India product registrations will not be open to public search. The soft launch of public search in April will be followed by a celebratory launch event in India.

We have posted a brief "India Information Sheet" on your My Account page to allow broad access by your teams. 
Televisions: ENERGY STAR 6.0 Changes to 6.1
To make sure this change is noted and understood by all Subscribers, we contacted Verena Radulovic at ENERGY STAR. Here is a recap of her explanation of the changes:
  1. Version 6.1 just replaces the Version 6.0 and should be used immediately going forward. 
  2. Version 6.1 adds the final rule DOE test procedure that was previously in a proposed rule in addition to the NOPR. (Either is allowed, though ENERGY STAR strongly recommends using the new test procedure for new products being qualified).
  3. Products will stay ENERGY STAR qualified if they qualified under Version 6.0 using NOPR. It is upon the manufacturer to determine if they need to update their energy representations based on the new test procedure and communicate that to EPA.
  4. The incorporation of a few small definitional changes doesn't alter the requirements for meeting the spec.
Product Category Change
Some time ago, EPEAT instituted a "Tablet Notebooks" category in the PC and Displays category to designate notebook products with tablet capacity (folding or pivoting to a touchscreen). This appears to have created occasional confusion as to whether EPEAT covers the products now known colloquially as Tablets (i.e. "slates" with no keyboards).

To eliminate this confusion, EPEAT has rolled "tablet notebooks" back into the "notebooks" category to match the ENERGY STAR categorization of these products. Very few products were affected by this change, and the adjustment will only change the product category under which the products appear.
Tablets Meeting Notes and Resources
In December 2013, the U.S. Department of Energy and Green Electronics Council co-convened a two-day workshop to develop a better understanding of the slates/tablets product segment and environmental performance.

The workshop, attended by 39 stakeholders, was one element of a broad process through which GEC is gathering information on the product lifecycle of slates/tablets and their design and markets to include in a Slates and Tablets "primer." This document will help inform the broad community of stakeholders and provide a foundation for future standards development work in this product category.

A meeting summary and individual presentations on all aspects of the tablets lifecycle can be found here. 
Verification Updates