Green Cooling

As the demand for cooling increases, it is more imperative than ever to employ climate-friendly and sustainable cooling solutions. In Thailand, the refrigeration and air conditioning (RAC) sector accounts for approximately 20% of the country’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These emissions can be both direct (from use of refrigerants) and indirect emissions (from energy consumption).

By using the most energy-efficient technologies and natural refrigerants with very low global warming potential (GWP), the “green cooling” approach minimizes the negative environmental impacts of RAC appliances and helps to save energy cost. Through widespread dissemination of green cooling technologies, the RAC NAMA project aims to decrease the emissions in the sector by 0.9 Mt CO2eq per year by 2020.

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INTERNATIONAL PRACTICE

Nowadays, Green Cooling technologies are available and in use in many sectors. Natural refrigerants such as R290 (propane) and R600a (isobutene) are already used in 50% of newly produced refrigerators.

Unitary air conditioning (UAC), the fastest growing RAC subsector in many countries, is also seeing many positive changes. This is due to the inverter technology becoming more widespread and as major producing economies such as China and India bring R290-based UAC systems to the market.

Major businesses are also choosing to employ green cooling technologies, especially because of the significant cost savings they bring in. For example, Coca-Cola has already acquired 1.7 million units free of highly climate-damaging hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs and reduced electricity use up to 35% through intelligent energy management features.