From the University of Birmingham and the “more A/C exhausts, weather and climate stations hardest hit” department comes this report.
Their press office must be asleep at the wheel, because they don’t provide a link to the report listed in the press release. And I can’t find it anywhere searching for the title.
Global quadrupling of cooling appliances to 14 billion could see staggering increase in world’s energy consumption – new report
Soaring global need for cooling by 2050 could see world energy consumption for cooling increase five times as the number of cooling appliances quadruples to 14 billion – according to a new report by the University of Birmingham, UK.
This new report sets out to provide, for the first time, an indication of the scale of the energy implications of ‘Cooling for All’.
Effective cooling is essential to preserve food and medicine. It underpins industry and economic growth, is key to sustainable urbanisation as well as providing a ladder out of rural poverty. With significant areas of the world projected to experience temperature rises that place them beyond those which humans can survive, cooling will increasingly make much of the world bearable – or even safe – to live in. With populations increasing, expanding urbanisation and climate change impacts leading to more frequent heatwaves and temperature rises, the demand for more cooling will increase in the decades ahead.
There are currently 3.6 billion cooling appliances around the world today and the University of Birmingham report authors forecast that the 14 billion devices needed by 2050 will consume five times the amount of energy currently predicted for cooling usage.
The report – A Cool World – Defining the Energy Conundrum of ‘Cooling for All’ – states that, by 2050, if we are to meet our Paris Climate targets to hold temperature increases to 2’C, total energy consumption for cooling must be limited to 6,300 TWh. Without action beyond current technology capabilities and efficiency gains, cooling could account for 19,600 TWh of energy consumption per year, against a current annual usage of 3,600 TWh. Even with new technologies coming on board, the annual energy requirement will be 15,500 TWh.
The report states that, along with aiming to reduce overall demand, if we are to meet our climate goals a whole new system approach to cooling is needed, recognising available free and waste cold and heat resources and incorporating new technologies, data connectivity, thermal energy storage to meet demand in the most efficient way.
Professor Toby Peters, ‘A Cool World’ report author from the University of Birmingham’s Energy Institute, said: “Current projections do not consider a ‘Cooling for All’ scenario and it will be impossible to meet the UN’s sustainable development goals as well as the Paris climate change targets. If we are to meet either of these, relying on technology efficiency and greening electricity won’t be sufficient.
“The challenge now is how to start with a system-led approach, better harnessing a portfolio of energy resources and adopting novel technologies. In order to achieve this, we need to start by asking ourselves a new question – no longer ‘how much electricity do we need to generate?’ but rather ‘what is the service we require, and how can we provide it in the least damaging way.”
The report concludes that:
- Under the current scenario, over the next 30 years 19 cooling appliances will be sold every second; but this will not deliver ‘Cooling for All’.
- By 2050, we would require a total of 14 billion cooling appliances globally to meet demand – an additional 4.5 billion appliances compared to the baseline forecast of 9.5bn– or four times as many pieces of cooling equipment than are in use today.
- to “green” the volume of electricity required would consume more than 80% of the International Energy Agency’s projected total renewables capacity for 2050 and more than 100% in the event we do not achieve accelerated technology progress.
According to the report, if we are to take cooling demand seriously, the key stages to move towards a solution for cooling demand are:
- Reducing the energy required for cooling: getting industry to adopt high efficiency cooling technologies and using maintenance to deliver optimum performance.
- Reducing the need for cooling through better building design
- Systems level thinking across built environment and transport
- Harnessing waste resources: ‘wrong time’ renewables; waste cold; and waste heat.
- Considering the strategies and skills required for installing appliances and maintaining them in order to maximise efficiency and reduce energy demand
- Creating a model for delivery of affordable cooling to those in rural and urban communities based on the energy needs of local requirements, rather than imposing a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
The report authors call for the creation of a series of real world ‘Living Labs’. These labs will engage at community level, testing and demonstrating not only new technologies, but also the socio, business, governance, policy and funding models. This will ensure that new thinking on systems, new innovations and business models can be properly designed and tested.
Given the urgency and need to combine engineering and social sciences for an integrated approach that includes the behaviour of individuals, technical solutions, and the business models to make those solutions viable, they also urge the creation of an international centre for excellence: its aim to deliver global collaboration on cooling – enhance awareness and understanding of the challenge of cooling; to build a roadmap and deliver the innovation pipeline; provide skills and education, and lead on trialling new technologies at scale.
The report builds on the University’s research partnerships in India and Birmingham recently signed an agreement with the State Government of Haryana to advance the use of ‘clean cold’ technology in India and help meet rising demand for cooling sustainably.
This landmark agreement followed the world’s first-ever Congress on Clean Cold held at the University of Birmingham last month and supported by the University’s India Institute, which also sponsored the first Birmingham-Haryana clean cold workshop last year.
Notes to Editors
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Weren’t some of the old CFC refrigerants more efficient than the new ones? I wonder if they’ll ever have to choose between CO2 and ozone. That would be a funny dilemma to watch.
Solution?
Have the Chinese produce more insulation, with their ozone depleting gases and we’ll barely need aircon units.
🙂
In lieu of AC, we could always try more cowbell. 😉
[ Ultra High-Temperature Pasteurization – (UHT) milk packaged in a sterile container, if not opened, has a typical unrefrigerated shelf life of six to nine months. In contrast, HTST pasteurized milk has a shelf life of about two weeks from processing, or about one week from being put on sale. ]
Use heat to lessen the need for refrigeration?
Seichi Konzo “lived in the first air-conditioned house in North America in 1933”
11/17 – “Konzo inducted into ASHRAE Hall of Fame”
https://mechanical.illinois.edu/news/konzo-inducted-ashrae-hall-fame
The air-conditioner is bad but what about the huge pavement area all around ? only a complete idiot or a climate shyster would put a thermometer in this location .
climate shyster trying to create a warming bias I meant to say
More A/C equals more outdoor heating. A/C makes it hotter causing more A/C needs making it even hotter, and so on and on! Cities burst into flaming Armageddon from A/C use. The point of no return. It’s worser than we thought.
Only salvation is to capture hot air and pump it into the ground and retrieve it in the winter!
HACC — Hot Air Capture and Storage to the rescue!
make that “HACS”
Let them eat air conditioners…..
I like the illustration on page 29. Can you imagine if all the Climate Activists had to travel to work and back and to their conferences this way:
OK S.
Aren’t they the delegates?
No, that’s the other end …..
No that’s normal practice, that way they can freely misrepresent what the paper actually says and spin it to fit their agenda.
The little sedan in the picture isn’t representative.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Napa+State+Hospital+-+Secured+Treatment/@38.2783375,-122.2663175,144a,35y,112.97h,44.99t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x808506003fe36c25:0x78516d174dde1d52!8m2!3d38.2759364!4d-122.2685113
A fire truck backed up to the sensor is in this view.
1)”Reducing the energy required for cooling: getting industry to adopt high efficiency cooling technologies and using maintenance to deliver optimum performance.
2)Reducing the need for cooling through better building design
3) Systems level thinking across built environment and transport
4)Harnessing waste resources: ‘wrong time’ renewables; waste cold; and waste heat.
5)Considering the strategies and skills required for installing appliances and maintaining them in order to maximise efficiency and reduce energy demand
6) Creating a model for delivery of affordable cooling to those in rural and urban communities based on the energy needs of local requirements, rather than imposing a ‘one size fits all’ approach.”
The above is all socialist/ communist philosophy of trying to control everything
1) Industry always does this anyway. If you dont sell efficient products you wont last in the marketplace.
2) Building designers already have this in their goals.
3) Everyone has been taught systems level thinking.
4) Waste is a dirty word these days so we already do this even to a ridiculous non optimal sense.
5) Maximizing efficiency is already done but attempting to globally reduce energy demand is futile if you understand Economics 101 which most socialists don’t.
6) Industry will deliver cooling to the masses, NOT a socialist bent bureaucrat.
THIS WHOLE STUDY IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF socialistic/communistic mentality that proposes to make our life better but in reality will make our life a living hell.
Howzabout we apply the Rock Solid Settled Science of the GHGE?
Air con: Cools the air and in doing so condenses whatever water vapour there may be in that air.
I used to have a little single room unit and it actually had a ‘dehumidifier’ setting.
We all know that water vapour is THE Green House Gas so by installing & running all these air cons – would that not reduce the magnitude of the Green House Effect?
That is, removing water vapour from the atmosphere will reduce the GHGE – and thus reduce the need for more air cons?
Should not folks be actively encouraged to install air-cons and reduce Global Climate Weird Whatever Warming Change?
** See note below
This goes deep, very deep, does it not?
The alert reader will be wondering why folks want to remove CO2 from the atmosphere when water vapour removal is so much easier and in fact, well established.
(We actually do know: CO2 removal is the realm of Government Cronies printing money for themselves)
Same alert reader will now be wondering how much energy it takes to create water vapour from liquid water, compared to the amount of energy it ‘traps’ via its GHGE.
Because, if it traps less energy than it takes to create, the creation of water vapour is a cooling effect and the GHGE is a Dodo.
If it traps more energy than it took to create, then Mr Big Climate Scientist has his work cut out to explain why the situation does not run away with itself. You have a thing which creates itself.
Explicitly: Trapped Energy creates water vapour which traps energy which creates more water vapour which traps more energy etc etc ad nauseam.
AKA: Positive Feedback and especially strong feedback given Stefan’s Law describing how power and temperature relate to each other. And the positive feedback is even stronger given that the Specific Heat capacity for water vapour is only half that of liquid water.
Open Question to those who believe in the GHGE: Why is the Stratosphere not where the ocean is and vice-versa and everywhere else at some unimaginably high temperature?
What puts the brakes on, and, Stefan is not the answer because Stefan is the *positive* driving force here.
** Do bear in mind the discomfiture that human animals have when passing off untruths. Everyone recalls James Hansen’s Pants On Fire Moment involving air cons – is that Achilles Heel of Global Warming and *nobody* actually does believe in or even understand the GHGE
Hi Anthony, I don’t think it is an actual report. I think it is a press release from Birmingham for a conference on refrigerative cooling. Go to Birmingham Uni site and search A Cool World – there are a number of entries and all seem related to a conference. Here is the first one https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/International/global-engagement/india-institute/news/a-cool-world.aspx
I found a slide show, not a ‘report.’
https://issuu.com/birminghamenergyinstitute/docs/a-cool-world-congress-presentation-
Just because no one’s said it yet, “I got a fever, and the only cure is more cowbell!’
Joel, look again… 10:07AM…
Ha! There it is! You beat me to it!
• Reducing the energy required for cooling: getting industry to adopt high efficiency cooling technologies and using maintenance to deliver optimum performance.
Every single HVAC designer already knows this. The TCO for any system is minimized by design efficiency and maintenance. What they are arguing instead is for higher SEER no matter the cost and higher maintenance costs regardless of ROI.
Since they are spending Other People’s Money (OPM), cost doesn’t matter.
Go nuclear.
I would have thought if the Earth had a fever the only solution was “more cowbell.”
Right now there are about 7 billion people in the world, which might increase to 8 billion by the year 2050.
Why would 8 billion people need 14 billion air conditioners, or 1.75 air conditioners per person?
Most of the world’s people live with families in apartments or single-family houses, each of which probably only needs at most one air conditioner (some homes in cold climates don’t have air conditioners), so that the number of air conditioners in 2050 will probably be less than the population at that time.
There are very few AC units in San Francisco.
Offices. Factories. Hotels, Hospitals, etc.
From the article: “With significant areas of the world projected to experience temperature rises that place them beyond those which humans can survive”
Be afraid. Be very afraid. Order your air conditioner now!
Alternatively, invest in AC manufacturers.
I’ve avoided the need for an AC (in a climate that rarely gets over 90F) by installing an attic fan and two large awnings.
I suspect houses in areas with inexpensive water could be kept cool enough to avoid AC by installing a thermostat-controlled sprinkler system on their roofs. Evaporation would do the work. I’m surprised such systems aren’t being offered for sale yet.
Swamp coolers are effective in many areas, and use less electricity. My neighbor uses one.
In a World that was warming, most of the warming would occur towards the poles and little would occur at the equator where you really need the air-conditioning. The pole-wards areas would benefit from a lower need for heating and increased agricultural output from warmth and CO2.
A modestly warming world will indeed need more air conditioners. A non-warming world will *also* need more air conditioners, and it will need them in the same places a warming world would. Even a cooling world would still benefit from air conditioners. It’s heat waves that are dangerous, and places where air conditioners are common are the *most* resilient to heat waves.
You could substitute “heaters” for air conditioning above, of course. Man’s ability to control the *indoor* climate renders us able to live in a huge variety of outdoor climates, as long as we have the resources (such as equipment and energy) necessary to do so. People die from weather today when they lack these things, and even if hideously expensive mitigation measures prevented global warming entirely (not at all likely) they would *still* die from lacking those things.
Seems that our grandparents survived without air conditioners.
Many of our grandparents survived without modern medicine as well.
MarkW
They just didn’t survive as long.
His analysis of the requirement for more A/C is reasonable enough. I have always maintained that we need 3-5 times our current energy production (soon) just to bring the majority of humanity up to a modern living standard.
The problem comes with his proposed solutions, which are just idle fiddling with the demand curve. At best, they might bring a 10% reduction in energy demand at huge cost.
The real solution is that word he dare not utter: Nuclear. Small, sealed, modular units that can be trucked in, buried on the outskirts of a community and provide power for 20 years or so before being dug up and replaced. With this small step, massive areas of the earth would suddenly become available for habitation.
As an example, I recently visited Morocco and the Sahara desert. In the photo, the houses are made of mud from the land they stand on. They may last hundreds of years. However, note that some are new. This community is growing. Most interesting, notice the number of white dots – satellite dishes. With satellite TV, A/C and wifi people can lead comfortable and modern lives in what were previously the most brutally primitive conditions.
http://www.dropbox.com/s/k8jfy8ru8i0t6x5/IMG_0536.jpg
The earth has a fever? Which end did you stick the thermometer in?
The usual end, the Al Gore end, always hot gasses there.