The aim of this study is to investigate, review, and assess the recent advances of alternative cooling technologies using traditional vapor compression (VC) systems as a baseline. Around 99% of the final energy consumption used for cooling in the current European market (European Union plus the United Kingdom (EU27 + UK) is supplied by VC technologies. In comparison, the remaining 1% is produced by thermally driven heat pumps (TDHPs). This study focuses on providing a complete taxonomy of cooling technologies. While the EU heating sector is broadly explored in scientific literature, a significant lack of data and information is present in the cooling sector. This study highlights technologies that can potentially compete and eventually replace VC systems within the decade (2030). Among others, the most promising of these are membrane heat pump, transcritical cycle, Reverse Brayton (Bell Coleman cycle), and absorption cooling. However, the latter mentioned technologies still need further research and development (R&D) to become fully competitive with VC technologies. Notably, there are no alternative cooling technologies characterized by higher efficiency and less cost than VC technologies in the EU market.
This study investigates insights concerning the future of the cooling market of the European Union (plus the United Kingdom) and its possible development for the upcoming decade (until 2030). In this manuscript, a qualitative model—Porter’s five forces analysis (PFFA)—and a quantitative tool—multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA)—have been applied to produce a forecast and a corresponding validation technique. It has been observed that the MCDA tool came to a similar conclusion as the PFFA methodology, highlighting that, presumably, the cooling market will continue to grow moderately, mainly thanks to research and development (R&D) as the central driving force. Moreover, the latter is strictly connected with R&D developments, economic crises, and the welfare of the European population. Additionally, in this study, an extensive survey conducted on interviews of experts throughout each European country confirmed the slightly positive future developments forecast up to 2030 from the quantitative and qualitative methods mentioned above. The results of the study describe a steady growth of the cooling market in Europe until 2030 of about 1–2% annual increase, for a total gain of 24%.
The current study aims to investigate one of the most underexplored energy fields in scientific research, i.e., final energy consumption (FEC) of space cooling (SC) in the European (EU27+UK) transportation sector with 2019 as a baseline. The fundamentals of this study include a comprehensive literature review as well as the creation of a dataset characterized by completeness and reliability. Different essential input parameters have been investigated and the encountered data and information gaps have been filled. The transportation sector has been broken down into three main categories, namely, light, medium, and heavy vehicles. Throughout the EU27+UK, the number of vehicles, equivalent full load hours (EFLHs), system power capacities, and their related energy efficiency levels have been collected. The collected data and information have been computed and the EU27+UK FEC for space cooling in the transportation sector resulted in more than 125 TWh/year. It is worth underlining that the light vehicles category accounted for the majority of the total FEC, followed by the medium and heavy vehicle categories, respectively.
This study investigates Europe’s space cooling energy field. The work aims to assess the European Union (plus the United Kingdom) final energy consumption for space cooling in both the residential and service sectors with 2016 as a baseline. An extensive literature review of datasets and journal papers has been conducted to fill the knowledge gaps of the investigated energy branch. The European space cooling market is mainly dominated by vapour compression (VC) technologies which, in this study, have been grouped as room air conditioners (RACs) and centralized air conditioners (CACs). These technology groups have been investigated, and their installed capacities, energy efficiency levels (seasonal energy efficiency ratio—SEER), equivalent full load hours (EFLHs), and amount of space cooling units installed have been identified as essential parameters to calculate the final energy consumption for space cooling. Overall, the total value of the European final energy consumption for the space cooling sector, including both the residential and service sectors, results in 106 TWh/year.
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