By: Susan Kraemer
Nearly all of the globe’s top 30 mega-cities are in the tropics, in developing nations. As they develop – while simultaneously, over the coming decades; the climate heats further, the demand for air conditioning in these gigantic mega-cities (in India, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria) is going to skyrocket, according to a study by Michael Sivak at the University of Michigan.
The potential is for a huge increase in energy demands. India’s 18 million people, just in Mumbai alone could potentially need energy for cooling that is equivalent to a quarter of the demand of the entire US.
Simultaneously, climate change itself makes it imperative that the world replace fossil sources for electricity to run the air conditioners that will help make a warmer planet bearable.
As a result, one of the most rapidly growing new business sectors will be in innovation in low carbon cooling technologies.
We have a choice still, between a warmer planet and a truly chaotic phase change in climate. It depends on whether we continue to innovate – like California did – to meet this challenge.
Currently, consumers in the undeveloped world with no air conditioning have a 3 ton carbon footprint. US consumers average a 20 ton footprint, split evenly between how we heat and cool the buildings we live and work in, and what we drive between them.
We could do better. With 30 year old technology, Californians average only a 10 ton carbon footprint thanks to appliance and building efficiency mandates like Title 24 signed by former Governor Jerry Brown in the eighties.
Germany proposes that everyone on the planet should aim for a 5 ton footprint, which is what the planet can support sustainably. If everyone lived like Americans currently we would need five planets. Air conditioning that cools future mega-cities in the developing world should be a One Planet solution to get us all to 5 carbon tons each.
An example would be a new refrigerant developed by Honeywell with a 99.7% lower global warming potential. It was developed to meet European emissions standards under Kyoto climate legislation. Another example would be an invention that ARPA-E has funded that makes it possible to do without any refrigerant in A/C altogether.
Image: Maxsimus
Susan Kraemer@Twitter
What is CleanTechnica?
All CleanTechnica articles
Reprinted from Cleantechnica with permission from Green Options Media.
See what we're tweeting about
2 Comments
Add CommentAnother example that is being widely used now in many tropical cities in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and several other countries is the use of hydrocarbon refrigerants such as propane or R290 in existing systems. Contrary to the received wisdom in the US, this can be done safely and has been taking place for over 10 years, with many different brands of hydrocarbon refrigerant competing for market share.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs well as preventing further direct emissions of the HCFC R22 that is replaced (and emissions of the even higher Global Warming Potential HFC alternatives being used in new systems), converting existing R22 equipment is well established to provide energy savings of at least 10%, and commonly around 20% - and it is this fact that has been quietly driving the market for hydrocarbons in Asia. Indonesia is probably leading the field, with hydrocarbons being produced domestically by several companies, including Pertamina, and is enjoying increasing use in commercial air conditioning and the mining industry.
In China Gree Air Conditioning is releasing a range of propane domestic air conditioners, and in Australia a wide range of propane air conditioners from Benson Air Conditioning have been on the market for 2 years, with 2 other companies preparing to enter the market later this year with very high efficiency propane systems.
Next month the German aid agency GTZ Proklima will release their "Guidelines for the safe use of hydrocarbon refrigerants" which will thoroughly document the requirements to ensure appropriate precautions are observed. This will be an invaluable resource for policymakers, manufacturers, engineers and technicians.
In commercial refrigeration, CO2/ammonia cascade systems recently built in South Africa are delivering well over 20% greater energy efficiency than conventional R22 or HFC R404a
systems, and this is a robust and widely applicable solution throughout high ambient temperature regions worldwide.
As the Velders et.al. 2009 PNAS article demonstrates, HFCs will rise to 9-19% of radiative forcing emissions by 2050 if developing countries follow the developed countries in adopting HFCs. In order to buy time to avoid catastrophic climate change tipping points, phasing out HFCs as a matter of global urgency (and harvesting associated energy efficiency benefits) is among the most effective fast acting emissions abatement measures available. The natural refrigerants industry has the solutions, and we should not be taking risking further folly with fluorochemicals.
A 2010 article published in the Journal of Environmental Science & Policy calculated that the energy demand due to air conditioning usage will be in the range of an extra ~750,000GWh to ~1,350,000GWh with a 3.7C increase in surface temperatures under different population scenarios and increasing incomes by the year 2100. Residential A/C usage by 2100 will result in CO2 emissions of 592Tg to 1064Tg. This is significant given that India's total contribution to global CO2 emissions in 2009 was measured at 1670Tg and country's residential and commercial electricity consumption in 2007 was estimated at 145,000GWh.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S146290111000119X