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Domestic air-conditioners are not widespread in Europe, but their electricity consumption is expected to more than double by 2020 and reach 75 TWh per year without energy saving measures – equal to the residential electricity consumption of Spain.
Incredibly, Europe’s heating equipment is responsible for 25% of the continent’s CO2 emissions, around the same level as road transport or industry. Heating is by far the largest source of energy consumption in our homes.
Europeans consume around 2.4 million tonnes of coffee a year – that’s over 400 billion cups! With such an insatiable thirst for coffee it is unsurprising that an estimated 20-22 million coffee machines are sold each year in the EU and the trend shows no sign of slowing down.
Different types of commercial refrigerators and freezers are available on the market today, such as beverage coolers, refrigerated vending machines, display cabinets in supermarkets, etc. Mostly used in supermarkets and grocery stores, they consume a substantial amount of energy: 85 TWh in the European Union in 2013 according to the European Commission, corresponding to 34 Mt CO2-eq.
Compressors are machines which increase the pressure of air, gases, or vapours through input of mechanical work. They are used in very diverse industrial processes like refining, exploration and production, chemical industries, medical applications, but also as process enabler such as in blowing processes (for beverage glass containers for example).
Computers, servers, monitors and imaging equipment are a cornerstone of the rapidly expanding IT sector. The resulting growth in electricity consumption and mountains of electronic waste can and should be tackled at design stage.
Approximately 8 million dishwashers are sold each year in the EU, with an annual electricity consumption of around 25 TWh, roughly the same as the residential electricity consumption of the Netherlands.
Fridges are the most commonly owned appliance in the European Union and the most energy hungry electric appliance in our homes. EU standards and an energy label have done a lot to improve efficiency, but they are now stale and no match for a trend towards ever-larger and more powerful machines, a trend threatening to wipe out all efficiency gains.
Electric motor-driven systems are composed of different energy-using products such as motors, drives, pumps or fans. They have been identified as a major consumer of electricity in industry and commerce for many years. Within these systems, the role of electric motors is to convert electrical power into mechanical power. By doing so, motors consume the vast majority of the electricity used by the system itself.
Enterprise Servers are used to process and store information in large quantities. With the explosion of digital content, e-commerce and internet traffic, their number is exploding, as is their total energy consumption.