Environmental directives
Environmental management systems can be certified by an independent body if they meet requirements given in ISO 14001. This type of certification mainly concerns industrial settings but can also be granted to places where products are designed.
A product environmental design sometimes called “eco-design” is an approach of sustainable development with the objective of designing products/services best meeting the customers’ requirements while reducing their environmental impact over their whole life cycle. The methodologies used for this purpose lead to choose equipment’s architecture together with components and materials taking into account the influence of a product on the environment along its life cycle (from extraction of raw materials to scrap) i.e. production, transport, distribution, end of life etc.
In Europe two Directives have been published, they are called:
- RoHS Directive (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) coming into force on July 2006 (the coming into force was on February 13th, 2003, and the application date is July 1st, 2006) aims to eliminate from products six hazardous substances: lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) or polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE).
- WEEE Directive (Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment) coming into force in August 2005 (the coming into force was on February 13th, 2003, and the application date is August 13th, 2005) in order to master the end of life and treatments for household and non household equipment.
In other parts of the world some new legislation will follow the same objectives.
In addition to manufacturers action in favour of products eco-design, the contribution of the whole electrical installation to sustainable development can be significantly improved through the design of the installation. Actually, it has been shown that an optimised design of the installation, taking into account operation conditions, MV/LV substations location and distribution structure (switchboards, busways, cables), can reduce substantially environmental impacts (raw material depletion, energy depletion, end of life)
See chapter D about location of the substation and the main LV switchboard.
