Power Consumption Limits and Energy Efficiency Levels of Household Refrigerators, numbered GB 12021.2-2015, kicked in officially on October 1, 2016.

To better reflect power consumption in daily use, new standards improved approaches used for the measurement, evaluation and calculation of a refrigerator's energy efficiency level. Under the new standards, refrigerators will be rated on a scale of 1(high energy efficiency) to 5 (low energy efficiency), and the new level 1 asks for a 40% cut in power consumption down from the old one. Apart from that, new standards expand its application beyond traditional products, such as refrigerators, refrigerator-freezers and freezers, to include innovative ones, such as wine coolers and display refrigerator-freezers.