SUSTAINABILITY
The cooling Catch-22
Martin Fahey is head of sustainability at Mitsubishi Electric Living Environment Systems UK and coordinator of the company’s Green Gateway programme. Here, he explains the dilemma that the cooling industry faces.
T
he 2019 Easter Bank Holiday weekend saw the hottest Bank Holiday Monday on record across all of the UK and last year, and for a six-week period, the country consistently topped 30°C. Whilst these temperatures may entice us to have more family BBQs and enjoy outdoor sporting events, the sad reality is that the heatwaves of 2018, according to the Met Office, were exacerbated by greenhouse gas emissions, and the risk of heatwaves is increasing. The UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment by DEFRA estimated that there are 2,000 heat-related deaths in the UK each year. Much of this increased risk is thought to be caused by exposure to high indoor temperatures. There is also a financial cost which could be in the range of £10-50m. The current UK housing situation is completely unequipped to deal with these increasing temperatures. According to the independent statutory body, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), roughly 20% of homes in England already overheat in normal summer conditions, with 80% of our housing stock still expected to be in use in 2050. New homes should be designed to not overheat, and in the extremes where overheating will occur then ventilation schemes should be deployed to keep internal temperatures within healthy limits. The choice as to whether a homeowner installs air conditioning should, of course, remain a decision for them, however reducing the need to consume energy for cooling (and for that matter, heating) is the right first step to take. Then the equipment selected should be efficient and easy to control. Buildings are a source of significant greenhouse gas emissions, with homes and workplaces in London alone accounting for 78% of CO2
emissions. The 2018 annual 6 June 2019
provisional figures for UK greenhouse gas emissions show the residential and business
sectors as delivering a combined 36% of CO2 emissions.
With traffic, business, leisure and residential emitters, along with reduced green spaces that could act as carbon sinks, cities are becoming increasingly exposed to the urban heat island effect – where a city becomes significantly and unusually warmer than its surrounding countryside. We’ve reached a stage where it has become hard to escape the need to consume energy, but in the working environment, we need to strike a balance of energy consumption when it comes to cooling. Manufacturers have a duty to ensure that cooling solutions on offer are as sustainable and energy-efficient as possible. For example, a hybrid system where traditional refrigeration-based systems work with water as a delivery medium, to lower the overall environmental impact, or perhaps selecting R32 as a refrigerant as it has a much lower global warming potential compared to many of its alternatives.
In some instances, cooling within the building is so vital it can be considered life critical. In the healthcare industry, hospitals and medical centres must rely on efficient cooling systems to ensure a constant yet comfortable temperature is maintained for its patients, staff and medical equipment. It is important that we maintain a balanced perspective between the impact and benefits of cooling environments and recognise that often, there is a fundamentally critical need for it. This critical need for controlled environments is one of the factors driving the industry to constantly innovate and find the most effective way to balance health and wellbeing with overall sustainability.
Constant innovation from the industry is ongoing and steps are being taken to ensure that the balance between comfort, energy efficiency and reduced climate impacts is met. Just recently, more than 20 world leaders developed The Cool Coalition to identify solutions and accelerate action on the transition to cleaner and more efficient cooling technologies. The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol states that phasing out hydrofluorocarbons is expected to deliver almost 0.4°C of avoided warming from addressing these gases alone.
Without action, emissions from the cooling sector are set to grow by 90% by 2050, or a quarter of global emissions in 2017. Increases in more sustainable cooling solutions are essential in our warming world but within this need, there lies the cooling catch-22: this very cooling is leading to an increase in our warming world. It is up to industry leaders and innovators to bring together effective and sustainable cooling and heating solutions together with better building design. Without it, the very thing helping us in the warming world could contribute to our decline. With the UK increasingly looking like the Mediterranean in the summer months and office spaces across the country ramping up their air conditioning, industry and businesses have to find a way to ensure that sustainability is taken as importantly as the health and comfort of building occupants.
This will not only require development and innovation at the cooling level, but also at the infrastructure level. New York City, for example, has just taken steps that will see the city famed for its skyscrapers, dispensing with buildings made purely of glass to help reduce the inside temperature and the reflective impacts on the surrounding air temperature.
www.acr-news.com
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