Inspection and auditing of air-conditioning facilities in Europe – A new efficiency target

Maxime Dupont and Jérôme Adnot, Center for Energy and Processes – Ecole des Mines de Paris

Keywords

Air-Conditioning, Inspection, Audit, EPBD, Energy-Efficiency, Obsolescence, Standard

Abstract

In coming years, the European stock of air conditioning equipments in use will partly become obsolete. In 2012, 50% of the Air-Conditioning market of EU-15 will be used to replace existing obsolete equipments (more than 15 years of operation) so that an opportunity exists to introduce higher efficiency systems. Indeed, the EPBD (European Energy Performance of Building Directive) introduced the technical obsolescence as a possible cause of replacement in addition to simple failure. A regular inspection of buildings equipped with Air-Conditioning systems is now obligatory.

First of all, the paper details the EPBD Article 9 (European Parliament 2003) on the inspection and explains its scope, objectives and stakes. Indeed, too costly or too frequent inspections could create market distortions by leading building owners to prefer low capacity equipments that can be less energy-efficient. The paper focuses on the definition and the relevance of the 12-kilowatt limit and then on the type of installations included in the scope of that inspection. Despite problems, stakes are important in terms of energy savings because there is a strong link between the inspection and the audit, which is the first step toward Energy-Efficiency.

After that first phase, we model inspection and audit markets in the European Union, especially in the five biggest markets. The model shows that the Air-Conditioning market will increase a lot in the future and that present stock will become obsolete very soon. Inspection and audit markets are therefore enormous and Member States have to prepare the transposition as quickly as possible.

Last of all, standardisation is one way to accelerate the adoption process for this regulation. The draft standard (CEN 2004) developed by CEN (European Committee of Standardization) is a step in that direction but seems to be imperfect and several questions remain. However, facing with the quantity of buildings and the lack of time, several Member States could adopt that standard instead of developing their own more ambitious project, which could lead to less energy savings than forecasted.