Various manufacturers and government R&D organizations have been supporting the latest technologies that can help improve performance and reduce system costs. In a 2011 report, IEA researchers set a performance target for installed equipment of 20%-40% A/C efficiency improvement by 2030 and 30%-50% improvement by 2050 to reach global building energy-efficiency goals. In June of 2016, the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) launched an Advanced Cooling Challenge with the support of the governments of the United States, India, China, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. The challenge aims to encourage the development and deployment of super-efficient, smart, climate-friendly, and affordable cooling technologies. Numerous manufacturers and nonprofit groups have made commitments to support the challenge. Similar to the IEA report, the Clean Energy Ministerial challenge aims to improve average A/C system efficiency by 30% by 2030. This could reduce global CO2 emissions by up to 25 billion metric tons over the lifetime of the equipment, which is equivalent to eliminating the annual emissions of 1,550 coal-fired power plants. Selected products on the market today can meet or exceed the Advanced Cooling Challenge efficiency targets for different A/C equipment types. While current technologies may provide high-efficiency performance, the targets and products assume high GWP HFC refrigerants, and the transition to low-GWP refrigerants may pose new challenges to match both baseline and high-efficiency products. Nevertheless, laboratory testing has revealed several alternative refrigerants that provide similar or improved efficiency (COP) and capacity compared to the R 410A baseline with only soft-optimization. These initial results suggest that the A/C industry can meet or exceed these efficiency targets with A/C systems designed specifically for low-GWP refrigerants. While today’s most efficient products already meet the EIA’s performance targets, many of these high-efficiency technologies still have prohibitively high upfront costs for most of the global market. For example, the highest efficiency A/C products in the U.S. can carry an upfront cost premium of 50%-150% or greater, although this spread is gradually decreasing. Consumers predominantly purchase baseline or moderate-efficiency equipment, so reducing the cost of high-efficiency products will continue to be a key research focus. Along with performance goals, which reduce operating costs, the IEA also sets an equipment cost reduction goal of 5-20% for high-efficiency technologies. This lower-cost, high-efficiency systems will have a larger market impact through wider customer adoption and have the potential to drive new government appliance standards. For these reasons, the BTO emerging technology program sets cost reduction targets for various heat pump systems to “bend the cost curve” for high-efficiency products and accelerate market adoption.
