China Energy Outlook 2020 - Flipbook - Page 92
Improving Energy Efficiency and Reducing GHG Emissions from Cooling Equipment
HFCs are currently the fastest growing category of GHGs, growing at the rate of 10–15 percent
per year. Growing demand for air-conditioning and refrigeration, especially in emerging
economies like India, Indonesia, and China, is also contributing to the rising demand for HFCs.
Market potential in these countries is very high for a number of reasons, including hot climates,
growing incomes and electrification, and growing urbanization—and also because relatively
small proportions of the large and growing population currently own air conditioners (ACs). Air
conditioner sales in many emerging high population economies such as Brazil, India, and
Indonesia are growing at 10–15 percent per year, and current penetration rates are still low. In
India, for example, market penetration of room ACs was about 3 percent in 2011. In China,
urban household penetration of room ACs has quickly increased from 5 percent in the mid1990s to 126 percent in 2012, but rural ownership rates were still below 34 percent in 2014.
In part, due to their significant contribution to residential and commercial energy use, ACs are
also typically one of the first appliances for which energy efficiency standards, labels,
procurement, incentives, and other types of efficiency programs are adopted worldwide. Since
both refrigerant transition and efficiency improvement require redesign of the equipment and
retooling of manufacturing lines, ensuring such efforts are coordinated has the potential to
keep costs low for consumers, manufacturers, and funding agencies.
In October of 2016, nearly 200 Parties agreed to amend the Montreal Protocol in Kigali,
Rwanda, to phase-down consumption and production of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by 2050. In
its HFC Primer, the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) discussed how
fast action under the Montreal Protocol could limit growth of HFCs, prevent 100 to 200 billion
tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) emissions by 2050, and avoid up to 0.5°C of
warming by 2100, with additional climate benefits from parallel improvements in energy
efficiency of air conditioners and other appliances.
Excerpt from Shah et al., 2017.
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