EU Energy Label Explained: What A–G and kWh/Year Mean

How to read the EU energy label — what the letter grade means, why kWh/year predicts your bill, and where the old A+++ scale went.

Why the label was rescaled — and why A+++ disappeared

For years, the EU energy label ran from a plain A to G, then grew extra pluses — A+, A++, A+++ — as products got more efficient and manufacturers ran out of room at the top. By the late 2010s most fridges and washing machines on sale were clustered at A+++ or A++, which made the label nearly useless for actually comparing products: almost everything looked "top tier". In 2021 the EU reset several major categories (fridges/freezers, washing machines, dishwashers, TVs) back to a plain A–G scale, deliberately calibrated so that very few or no products qualify for A on day one — that headroom is intentional, to leave room for future efficiency gains instead of re-running out of pluses again.

The practical consequence: a product's old A+++ rating and its new letter are not directly comparable. A 2020 fridge rated A+++ under the old scale might land at C, D or even lower under the new one, without becoming any less efficient — the ruler changed, not the product. If you're comparing an appliance you already own against one you're thinking of buying, the letter grade alone can be actively misleading unless you know which scale each one uses.

How to read the label now

The current label is built around a few consistent elements across categories:

• The letter, A to G, on a colour scale from dark green (A) to red (G) — a quick, relative ranking against other products of similar size and type in that category.
• Energy use in kWh per year (or, for some categories, per 100 cycles) — a large, prominent number that is the actual figure worth writing down when comparing running costs.
• A QR code linking to the full entry in the EU's EPREL database, with the complete test data behind the summary label.
• Category-specific icons — capacity in litres for a fridge, noise in decibels for a washing machine, screen size and resolution for a TV — which don't affect the letter grade directly but matter for a fair comparison.

The number that actually predicts your bill

The letter is a ranking; the kWh/year figure is the one you can turn directly into money. Take the annual kWh figure from the label and multiply by your price per kWh to get a genuine running-cost estimate — which is exactly what the electricity cost calculator on this site does if you enter the annual kWh divided into a daily average, and what each appliance page already does using typical published figures for that category.

Worked example: two fridges, both labelled "A" on the current scale because they're similar sizes, can still show 220 kWh/year and 260 kWh/year respectively on their labels — an 18% difference in real running cost that the shared letter grade doesn't reveal. At a typical residential price, that gap is a genuine, ongoing few euros a year, every year, for the life of the appliance — small on a single bill, real over a decade.

Comparing across sizes (where the letter can mislead)

Because the grade compares a product against others of similar size and type, a large A-rated fridge can legitimately use more electricity in absolute kWh/year than a small C-rated one — the small fridge is simply being graded against other small fridges, and the large one against other large fridges. If you're deciding between two different sizes, the letter answers "is this efficient for its size?", not "which one costs less to run?" — for that question, always compare the kWh/year numbers directly, not the letters.

Where you'll see the label

The rescaled A–G label now covers fridges and freezers, washing machines and washer-dryers, dishwashers, and TVs/displays, with light bulbs on their own version of the scale. If you're checking a specific appliance already covered on this site, the refrigerator, washing machine, TV and LED bulb pages each give a typical wattage and yearly cost range you can sanity-check a label's kWh/year figure against.

Frequently asked questions