Summer is here and in many regions of Europe temperatures are rising. In response to the warmer weather, businesses, shops, public offices and homeowners are turning on the air conditioning. Meanwhile, the European Union is discussing setting minimum efficiency requirements for these products for all 27 member states. Good news, but given the scale of the problem, the European Commission and Member States need to and could become far, far more ambitious. At the very least, they should look carefully at the more ambitious existing and planned air conditioning standards in other parts of the world. Surprisingly, the EU is seriously lagging behind many other countries, such as Japan.
With the fear of repeated heat waves, impulse purchases of air conditioners in many parts of Europe are increasingly common, especially given that many modern buildings are unfortunately badly designed and don’t cope well with the heat. People are rushing to buy cheap air–conditioning or portable air-coolers, without receiving adequate consumer information about the environmental and monetary costs. And once these produces are in place, they may sometimes be switched on even when the weather conditions are not so extreme. Back in April of this year – as she goaded the goose bumps down by drinking scalding tea –
Huma Qureshi of The Guardian begged her managers at the newspaper’s headquarter offices in London to turn off the air conditioning and 'please just open the windows'.
Whether justified or not, air conditioners across Europe are causing damage to the environment in more ways than one. Air conditioners require great amounts of electricity that are largely produced by fossil fuel burning power plants, and so make a substantial contribution to global warming. According to ‘the Carbon Trust’, carbon dioxide emissions from electricity for offices and shops typically double with air conditioning (more information for businesses on how to manage this can be downloaded
here).
In the domestic sector, aircon products are already responsible for 30 million tons of CO2 emissions per year over Europe, with a projected trend of 75 million by 2020. This is nearly a tripling…. If this was to happen, the domestic aircon sector would consume more energy and pollute more than all our fridges and freezers over a year. Moreover, the cooling machines still add to warming with the leakage of their refrigerant fluids – which are often based on climate-killer HFCs.
Unfortunately when people go to the shop or ask an installer and buy air conditioners, they are currently not always aware of the impact this will have on their electricity bill and on the climate. They are also unlikely to be told in the shop whether the product they are buying is suitable for the type of dwelling it will be used in. Products are supposed to carry an European A–G energy label, but this label is currently in need of updating, plus there is evidence that it is not always clearly displayed.
The main problem in the EU is that air-conditioning products are not regulated by any minimum energy performance requirement at the moment, contrary to what happens in other industrialised countries (US, Japan, Australia). This is why Europe has become the dumping ground of cheap poor performing products not tolerated elsewhere. A real shame!
The standards that are currently being discussed under the EU Ecodesign Directive are clearly insufficient to tackle this problem and they are giving way too much time to manufacturers to produce better products. According to Coolproducts campaigners, the current proposed levels of minimum efficiency would still be in 2014 very far from the level of the best products currently available in Japan. Most of the aircon that we buy in Europe are produced by Japanese manufacturers. So why should we allow them to produce lousier products for our market? The EU would still be lagging behind the US and Japan, which is certainly not what we can expect from the continent claiming to lead the international battle against climate change!
As it stands, the European regulations will apply separate, even weaker requirements for mini air-coolers, which are particularly inefficient ways of cooling rooms. Is this an attempt to please the Italian manufacturer of these movable equipment? This would risk encouraging the uptake of cooling appliances and drive an increase in demand, emissions, and energy imports, but also a major strain on the grid during summer’s hottest days – something which a few years ago was partly responsible for a major blackout.
The Coolproducts Campaign calls for tougher EU measures on all air-conditioners, that would discourage impulse purchase and inefficient use, with a promotion of alternative refrigerant fluids and an end to the energy waste in standby modes. A more detailed position paper is available
here).