The scenarios for 2030 for the air conditioning market presented during the ATMOsphere-DTI (Danish Technological Institute) online conference are truly impressive:

It is estimated that between 2019 and 2030 4.8 billion new cooling units will be sold globally (Source: "The Cooling Imperative" prepared by The Economist Intelligence Unit);

Annual sales will reach 460 million units, compared to 336 million in 2018 (Source: "The Cooling Imperative");

40% of total emissions come from construction and here HVAC contributes 8% (Source: World Green Building Council).

Really, then, air conditioning is "the elephant in the room" as Marc Chasserot, CEO of shecco defines it: if you compare the market share of air conditioning (mobile, commercial, residential and industrial) compared to that of refrigeration, the first certainly makes the lion's share with over 60%.

More or less the same ratios are recorded with regard to refrigerants. According to UNEP, air conditioning has a 65% market share of refrigerants, which is why, although the energy efficiency of appliances is a fundamental theme for limiting emissions, that of the type of refrigerant is equally.

With regard to them, today the options available for air conditioning and in line with the F-Gas Regulation are:

Low GWP HFCs such as R32 which has a GWP of 675, higher than the average of 400 that should be reached by 2030, according to the F-Gas regulation;

HFO like R1234yf, which however breaks down into TFA in the atmosphere, suspected of causing a series of problems to the ecosystem;

Natural refrigerants, which are currently objectively the only solution that does not present any of the problems of GWP and interactions with the ecosystem, which we find in previous solutions.

If today natural refrigerants are only a niche in the air conditioning sector, shecco is convinced that what has happened in the refrigeration sector can occur in this sector where today natural refrigerants are becoming increasingly popular and are used in geographical locations and applications unthinkable only 15 years ago.

What is certain is that the consensus of the industry continues to grow: Egypt, India, Pakistan are converting production lines to R290 but most of all China is thinking that in recent years it has converted 18 production lines to R290 and today has a capacity production of 4.5 million units / year. And China has been indicated in the aforementioned "The Cooling Imperative" report as the nation that will guide the market for air conditioning demand in the future, but perhaps - we add - also the supply market.

Europe is moving towards air conditioning with natural refrigerants for now especially with R290 laptops: there are eight manufacturers and it is estimated that in this sector within two years all new units will be at R290.

Judging by market signals, technological developments, stakeholder perceptions, we are at the beginning of a transition that will bring natural refrigerants out of the niche and establish itself in air conditioning. This is especially true for Europe which will soon have to revise the F-Gas Regulation.

And as Bente Tranholm-Schwarz, Deputy Head of Unit, European Commission, DG Climate, rightly said at the conference, the situation in which we find ourselves reviewing the regulation today is very different from that of 2012, when the regulation was born. Today Europe has set itself the strategy of the Green Deal to achieve a decarbonised economy by 2050. This necessarily requires more efforts from everyone, therefore also from the cold sector; the developments of natural refrigeration in recent years have led to new technologies now established on the market; not least, more and more studies are appearing which question the harmlessness of a growing accumulation of TFA, a molecule that derives from the environment of HFOs, for the ecosystem. And since the precautionary principle is a pillar in the EU decision-making process, these studies cannot be ignored during the revision of the F-Gas regulation.

We are witnessing an increasing affirmation of digitalization to make systems more smart; and Covid stressed the added value of being able to manage and control them remotely;

The "pay per use" model is also affirmed in cold weather, which no longer becomes a facility but a service, both for air conditioning and refrigeration.

The coming years will be decisive for everyone, both for those who choose a new natural refrigerant technology that will contribute to the affirmation of these technologies also in air conditioning, and for those who do not and will therefore have to face a legislative landscape that is currently changing.