Sustainable air conditioning technologies will help phase-down HFCs

Over 100 million room air conditioners were sold worldwide in 2015. Air conditioning, along with refrigeration, is the largest and fastest growing use of high global warming potential (GWP) hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) worldwide.

In October 2016, the countries of the world agreed to start phasing down their use of HFCs through an amendment to the Montreal Protocol (known as the Kigali Amendment). On 17 November 2017, 14 CCAC Partner countries joined with 7 others as climate leaders by ratifying the Kigali Amendment, pushing it over the 20-country threshold for the Amendment to come into force on January 1, 2018.

“There is now no question of the urgent need to quickly identify and deploy environmentally-sound solutions to give Parties the tools they need to meet their obligations under the Amendment while also meeting the rapidly increasing global demand for air conditioning,” states Helena Molin Valdes, Head, Climate and Clean Air Coalition Secretariat.

To discuss these alternatives, more than 230 people from governments, NGOs, and the private sector met in Montreal, Canada, at the Sustainable Technologies for Air Conditioning Workshop, to learn about available environmentally-friendly, energy efficient, and cost effective alternative technologies in air conditioning.

The workshop was held on the margins of the 29th Meeting of the parties of the Montreal Protocol (20-24 November, 2017), and is the second in a series of workshops providing information on advances in alternatives for different fields of application where HFC use is growing. The workshop aimed to familiarize participants with innovative, alternative air conditioning (AC) technologies which have proven their applicability and shown that phasing down high-GWP HFCs is manageable. 

“The Workshop was a very enriching event for policy makers, industry members, academia and NGO’s to interact and understand the regulatory and techno-commercial issues that need to be overcome for phasing down HFC’s across all manufacturing sectors,” stated workshop presenter Sangeet Kapoor, Head of Climate Control Vehicle Attributes and technical Services at Tata Motors. “The Workshop provided relevant insights not only on the challenges but also possible solutions for paving the way forward to make the HFC phase down process a truly global success.”

Nearly 30 international experts from developed and developing countries presented on the latest advancements in key HFC alternative technologies for the air conditioning sector and topics related to safety, operation performance in many environments (including those with high ambient temperatures), energy efficiency, and technology deployment.

The 14 CCAC countries who have ratified the Kigali Amendment as of November 17 are: Australia, Canada, Chile, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Finland, Germany, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Luxembourg, Maldives, Mali, Norway, Rwanda, Sweden, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. They joined Comoros, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (Federated States of), Palau, Slovakia, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu.