Status Quo of the Air-Conditioning Market in Europe: Assessment of the Building Stock

Abstract

This study fills in knowledge gaps for the European air-conditioning (AC) market, which is fundamentally important to raising awareness about primary energy utilization. In contrast to space heating (SH) and domestic hot water (DHW) preparation, the European Union (EU) AC market is barely explored in scientific literature. While the focus of previous research has been on the residential sector, a shortfall of data for the services (wholesale and retail, offices, education, health, hotels and bars) exists. In this paper, data describing the actual space cooling (SC) market in Europe (quantity of SC units, equivalent full-load hours, installed capacities, seasonal energy efficiency values as well as cooled floor area per AC type and/or sector) is collected and explored using a bottom-up approach. Results indicate that SC is responsible for a significant portion of EU electricity consumption in households (nearly 5%) and even more in the service sector (~13%). Energy consumption for SC in the EU28 appears to be more than 140 TWh/y. The quantification of the European AC consumption shows a significant difference between the service and residential sectors: about 115 versus 25 TWh/y respectively. The SC market in Europe is characterized by a high potential for growth, especially in households.

Assessment of the Space Heating and Domestic Hot Water Market in Europe—Open Data and Results

“…Based on the methodology proposed by Pezzutto et al 2017 [7], once the data collection has been concluded, mean capacities installed per technology have been divided by their respective energy efficiency coefficients to obtain the work input (W) per equipment type. Then, in order to obtain energy consumption values per equipment type and sector, the number (Nr.)…”

“…In 2015, EU's primary energy consumption accounted for about 1600 Mtoe/y, of which a major contribution is provided by heating and cooling (H&C) applications (about 800 Mtoe/y, including also industrial heat), followed by transport and electricity (about 490 Mtoe/y and 310 Mtoe/y respectively) [4][5][6][7][8]. Buildings are responsible for approximately 640 Mtoe/y, which corresponds to 40% of the whole EU primary energy consumption [9,10].…”

“…In the past three decades, EU MS invested massively in assessing the energy used by the different sectors [12][13][14][15][16][17]. In contrast to SC, the SH and DHW field is well researched in the scientific literature since more than two decades apart [7,18].…”

Modelling of a Variable Refrigerant Flow System in EnergyPlus for Building Energy Simulation in an Open Building Information Modelling Environment

“…This factor is obtained by dividing the cooling EIR (energy input ratio, this is the inverse of the cooling COP ratio) at each pair of temperatures and at full load by the nominal cooling EIR. Similarly to the cooling capacity, these results can be input to the EnergyPlus model as a table or as a performance curve by fitting them to Equation (5).…”

“…Buildings with diverse, multiple zones requiring individual control (office buildings, schools, hotels) are all good candidates [4]. VRF systems were reported as one of three most efficient systems when comparing different technologies installed in Europe, as well as one of the systems with the highest cooled floor area in commercial buildings such as offices and hotels [5].…”