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Chillers


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Smarter cooling trend grows


Pressure is on the UK to accelerate its carbon reduction programme, which must open doors for wider adoption of smart cooling solutions, according to James Henley, product development manager at Daikin Applied


but even the more politically acceptable goal set by the influential parliamentary Committee on Climate Change (CCC) of net zero by 2050 is challenging. The committee’s vice chair Baroness Brown of Cambridge also believes the built


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environment should be aiming for “real zero” rather than the “net” figure quoted in the CCC advice to government. She told a recent meeting of building services engineers that buildings would be a key focus of future government policy because they were responsible for a quarter of the country’s total CO2 emissions. “This is also an area where we know we can get to ‘real’ zero – not just ‘net’


zero – over the next 30 years,” she told the CIBSE Patrons annual lunch at the House of Lords. However, she warned that it would require a major transition “as we have the worst insulated homes in Europe and the highest proportion of housing connected to the gas grid”. The CCC told the government that a 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions should be legislated “as soon as possible” adding that it could be achieved at the same cost as the measures contained in the Climate Change Act i.e. 1-2% of GDP.


Progress


Much of the discussion so far has centred on the ‘hardware’ that is already available to the country – including wind power; heat pumps; solar power and shading – but there will have to be increasing focus on our ‘software’ options too. It is hard to see how we can make real progress without making much better use of the ‘smart’ technology options that are also readily available to us. In fact, without an acceleration in digital solutions, even the 2050 goal looks remote. However, there is movement in this area. A recent BSRIA report tracked the


growth of ‘Smart Connected HVAC’ across Europe with particular focus on the push to connect more heating and cooling systems to digital networks in order to improve monitoring and analysis. The ability to swiftly rectify any drop in performance by diagnosing a fault


before it becomes a more serious problem will be crucial to any strategy aimed at minimising carbon emissions. The wealth of data collected by remote monitoring helps service teams predict when a part is likely to fail so repairs can be quick and painless. This improves convenience and reduces cost to the end user, but can also be


exploited more widely to address the ‘other’ energy problem – the fact that more than 50% of the energy we already generate is wasted. Reduce that problem and you are already on a fast track towards a low to zero carbon future. This is part of an increasingly powerful commercial argument for pushing ahead with investment in smart tech. There is growing demand in households for ways to reduce energy bills – quite apart from the more lofty goal of ‘doing our bit’ for the environment. Similarly, in commercial buildings BSRIA found that the biggest driver was “business continuity and maintaining optimal physical environment”.


 June 2019


he recent climate change protests led by Extinction Rebellion have super charged the debate around the UK’s carbon emissions targets. The movement aspires to zero carbon by 2025 – a vision widely dismissed as unrealistic –


“If you are running a hotel, or selling chilled food, or if you are responsible for a home or hospital for people who are ill or elderly – then any outage of air conditioning and cooling systems can have serious consequences, ranging from financial losses to risks to people’s health,” the report said. The wider point, therefore, is that you can achieve much higher commercial


and carbon savings by actually improving people’s quality of life and well-being – this does not need to be about making major sacrifices to save the environment. BSRIA estimates that the European market for connected HVAC is already worth almost €200 million, but is set to double in value by 2023. At the moment, the smart air conditioning element is relatively small at about €45m, but it is also forecast to almost treble to €130 million by 2023 with a lot of this growth driven by service and maintenance.


Accelerating


There is a strong argument for accelerating that growth even further now because of the increased political will and social momentum created by Extinction Rebellion. Chillers are the largest single product segment of that market and, as


relatively complex and expensive pieces of equipment, represent the best case for investment in planned, strategic maintenance. Remote monitoring linked to a specialist service provider – ideally the original manufacturer – is an investment that pays back many times over thanks to minimal downtime and long-term optimal performance. Our industry is already moving into a new era for the way buildings and their


services are procured and managed. The renewed vigour around the climate change argument will only accelerate that and the industry should seize the opportunity to push further and faster by promoting the sophisticated systems we already have available and by demonstrating their potential to an increasingly receptive end user base.


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