Elsevier

Energy and Buildings

Volume 58, March 2013, Pages 355-362
Energy and Buildings

Assessing the market for air conditioning systems in European buildings

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2012.10.007Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper models the past and future sales, replacement rates and installed stock levels of air conditioning products in Europe. Established market diffusion models have been reformulated to allow their calibration against product sales data, and then used to estimate future and past sales levels, time-dependent product replacement rates and installed stock levels in each EU-27 country for each of the major energy-using air conditioning products. The results show that, for most air conditioning products, continuing growth of sales and stock is to be expected, albeit at lower rates than in previous years. Expressed in terms of kW cooling power, split-system room air conditioners and chillers continue to account for the majority of sales and stock, with variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems taking an increasing share of first-time installations. The results provide fundamental information on which to base policy assessments (which are not part of this paper).

Highlights

► Past and future sales, stock and replacement rates of European air conditioning. ► Estimates for each EU-27 country. ► Continuing growth of sales and stock is to be expected, albeit at reducing rates. ► Split-systems and chillers continue to account for most cooling with VRF growing.

Introduction

In Europe, the ownership and electricity consumption of air-conditioning in buildings has been increasing for several decades. Assessment of the extent to which these trends will continue is central to the development of policies to ameliorate the environmental and energy security consequences. Also important is the rate at which existing products will be replaced, potentially by those of higher efficiency.

This paper describes and applies procedures for estimating future levels of new and replacement sales, and installed stock. These were developed for use in Preparatory Studies for air conditioning systems and products in support of the application of Eco-design Directive [1], [2]. This paper does not address energy consumption per se: it provides a foundation for such assessments.

“Air-conditioning in buildings” here means air-conditioning systems whose primary purpose is to provide comfort for people: “comfort cooling” rather than cooling to support, for example, cold storage, IT equipment or industrial or other processes.

Section snippets

Air-conditioning products and systems

There are three broad categories of air-conditioning “systems” which are used for comfort cooling, some of which are self-contained products. To varying degrees, each of the following categories itself contains several types of product.

  • 1.

    Moveable units – appliances bought over the counter or through Internet suppliers and not generally requiring any installation expertise.

  • 2.

    Fixed room air conditioners/packaged systems – series-produced self-contained units or systems comprising a unit that

Functional units

Each of the categories of air conditioning system is more or less appropriate in different climates and building types. The choice is also influenced by whether a product or system is for installation in an existing building, in a new building or is a replacement for an existing system (or part of a system). In order to represent the market as a whole it is necessary to use a functional unit that can accommodate all these systems.

The logical functional unit is the nominal cooling capacity. This

Required outputs

Because different countries have different climatic, economic and market conditions it is necessary to consider each country separately. The summary results in this paper are mainly at an EU-27 level, which has been aggregated from figures for each Member State.

Within each country the residential and non-residential sectors may have differing market dynamics and are modelled separately. In principle, different parts of the non-residential sector may also differ, but there are insufficient data

Scope

This market sector includes both fixed and movable systems. The majority of European air conditioning in dwellings is provided by single-room systems, though there are actually more sales (and existing stock) of such systems in tertiary buildings. For regulatory purposes products of up to 12 kW cooling capacity are considered “domestic” most products sold are considerably smaller than this.

Market characteristics

Sales trends for household air conditioners appear to have three main parameters: household income, climate

Scope

There are many configurations of larger air conditioning systems (here taken as above 12 kW cooling capacity). These include larger packaged systems and centralised systems in which cooling is generated centrally within a building (or remotely) and distributed within the building by cooled air or water. In addition, there are distributed systems that do not fall into either of these categories: notably variable refrigerant flow (VRF) and water loop heat pump systems. VRF systems comprise a

Market maturity

Differences in lifetime, of technical characteristics, and of the length of time that different types of air conditioning product have been on the market result in differences in the percentage of sales that are for replacement of existing products, first-time installation in existing buildings or in new buildings. This is illustrated in Fig. 4.

At one extreme, nearly half of sales for window units are replacements, and are thus second-generation purchases (at least). This reflects their

Discussion and conclusions

Our analysis indicates that the European market for air conditioning in buildings can be expected to continue to grow during the next 15 years (at least). However, the rate of increase of installed cooling capacity will decline. As a consequence, the installed stock will grow more slowly. By 2025, the installed cooling capacity is likely to be 55–60% higher than in 2010. Annual total sales of products and systems will increase, driven increasingly by replacement sales – estimated sales in 2025

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