(Photo: © Dirk Müller/LIFTjournal/KI-generiert)
October 2025
An ecological data collection from 2022 shows that the overall energy consumption of lifts has decreased within just three years, driven by the increased adoption of energy saving technologies.
By ELA Product Ecology Working Group
Introduction: After the publication of the so called "E4 study" (see Box "E4 study") in 2010 the awareness of energy efficiency and consumption of lifts and escalators got triggered. One consequence was the creation of the ISO 25745 standards series, to measure energy demand, classify energy efficiency and calculate an annual estimated energy consumption of lifts and escalators.
E4 study In 2010, the E4 study on "energy efficient elevators and escalators" has been published by the ISR-University of Coimbra in Portugal, supported by the European Commission. This study has been considered as a great source for ecological data on elevators and escalators. It considers the entire installed elevator/escalator stock of the former EU-27 countries, which has been 4.8 million lifts as well as about 75 thousand escalators and moving walks at that time. Due to the scope of the entire installed lift and escalator stock, various generations of control and motor technologies have been considered for the calculations.
During the ecodesign preparatory study (see Box "Eco design preparatory study") it became evident that there is a lack of up-to-date information on the energy performance of today’s lifts and that the values from the E4 study did not reflect the state of the art for new lifts anymore.
Therefore, a first data collection for the year 2019 has been initiated by the European Lift Association ("ELA"). The target was to repeat this data collection on a regular basis to monitor progress in technology and energy consumption.
Eco design preparatory study The European Commission initiated an eco-design preparatory study in 2017 to assess whether lifts shall be included in the future eco-design Working Plan of the European Union. The eco-design preparatory study for lifts, published in 2018, also referenced the E4 study from 2010 multiple times.
Target of this survey was not only the updated collection of data regarding energy consumption of new lifts but also an overview of current technologies used.
ELA started the first ecological data collection in the year 2020, which was based on complete lifts sold in the year 2019. After collection, anonymization and consolidation the data were published in the year 2021. For various reasons only a small percentage of the reported lift could have been evaluated and the overall learnings about the real energy consumption of new lifts in the market was limited. But nevertheless, the result was by far more accurate and up to date than the values from the E4-study.
Based on the learnings from the first data collection, ELA launched a second survey in 2023 of all lifts sold in 2022 with the results presented in 2024. Further additional data such as the share of hoisting technologies, rated loads and nominal speeds have been collected to gain a better overview of the installed configurations in Europe, e.g. about the distribution of rated loads for certain hoisting technologies or car speeds.
The base cases (with ranges) have been defined for the data collection as shown in Table 1.
The second questionnaire turned out to be a great success, because, among other reasons, a higher contribution of more lift companies than three years before. The collected data do now cover a very wide range and lead to a high number of lifts that fall under the reporting.
A direct comparison of the results from the first and second data collection is possible but must in some cases be done with great care. But as the aim was to collect as many data as possible from as many manufacturers as possible (including SMEs), it was a clear wish to reduce the amount of required data from the manufacturers to a moderate level.
It also needs to be mentioned that no goods lifts have been considered in the study or other passenger lifts, which have been outside the study, e.g. 630 kg traction lifts with a nominal speed of 1.6 m/s.
The data collection has provided a great overview of the split of hoisting technologies for various configurations as well as the correlation between hoisting technologies, rated speeds and nominal loads.
In Figure 1 the split of hoisting technologies for all reported units is shown, and Figure 2 shows the leading role of gearless motors as hoisting technology.
Based on the calculations from all reported lifts, it has also become possible to show the share of energy consumption between travel, idle and standby for the 4 base cases for traction lifts as displayed in Figure 3. Due to lack of sufficient data no equivalent evaluation has been possible for hydraulic lifts.
The greatest success of the data collection was of course, that ELA is now able to state, that the traction lifts of the 4 base cases, which represent the majority of all lifts sold all over Europe, are in average within class B or better according to ISO 25745-2 standard.
If the collected data is analysed in greater depth, it becomes obvious that the fundamental technologies used in lifts have not changed substantially in the three years in between: all today applied technologies have been known and were available then.
However, design options or technologies, which provide energy saving, have increased in 2022 compared to 2019. A prime example of this trend is LED technology. LED car lighting has been known in the lift industry for many years, but for a long time, it coexisted with other lighting systems. In recent years, the adoption of energy-saving LED technology has steadily increased and is now approaching 100 percent.
The same tendency can be observed for other components or options, which are now used with higher percentages than only a few years ago. Figure 4 shows this trend in detail.
The second ELA ecological data collection has been a great success from our perspective. Thanks to the changes to the questionnaire, a significantly higher share of lifts in the European market could get evaluated than three years ago. Moreover, it has become evident that the overall energy consumption of lifts has decreased within just three years, driven by the increased adoption of energy saving technologies.
Members of ELA Product Ecology Working Group are Roger Beuret (Convenor), Alper Caliskan, Claudio Donghi, Covadonga Fernandez, Isabella Ferrario and Frank Schmidt.
More informations: https://www.ela-aisbl.eu/
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