1 00:00:04,580 --> 00:00:08,840 Right. Welcome. This is the future of coding podcasts. 2 00:00:08,990 --> 00:00:13,910 In this session we will discuss about the global cooling prise with our guest, Ian Campbell. 3 00:00:14,870 --> 00:00:20,210 Ian is a senior fellow at the Rocky Mountain Institute and has decades of experience in the cooling sector. 4 00:00:20,540 --> 00:00:25,790 Previously, he held various leadership position with Johnson Controls and York International. 5 00:00:26,210 --> 00:00:29,840 So welcome, Ian, and thank you for being here today. 6 00:00:31,470 --> 00:00:35,520 Yeah. Thank you. Look forward to the discussion and the opportunity here. 7 00:00:37,540 --> 00:00:44,020 Okay. For a start, could you please tell us just a bit more about the global cooling price, 8 00:00:44,200 --> 00:00:48,520 the history behind it, and what's the role of Rocky Mountain Institute? 9 00:00:50,290 --> 00:01:02,799 Yeah. So global cooling prise is an innovation challenge and it's a challenge that we launched in November 2018 to find 10 00:01:02,800 --> 00:01:13,750 a residential cooling solution or technology that could deliver comparable comfort to the products we use today. 11 00:01:14,080 --> 00:01:23,570 But with five times lower climate impact through its goods lifecycle, why did we launch the prise? 12 00:01:23,590 --> 00:01:28,470 I think that there's probably 2017. 13 00:01:28,540 --> 00:01:34,900 There's a number of things going on that came together that kind of shone a spotlight on the cooling space. 14 00:01:35,230 --> 00:01:45,790 I think first we had the Kigali amendment to the Montreal Protocol for the phase down of HFCS happened at the end of 2016. 15 00:01:46,240 --> 00:01:55,120 And then I think there was a lot of analysis done as part of getting the 197 countries to sign up to the amendment that 16 00:01:55,120 --> 00:02:06,069 spoke about what the growth in cooling was likely to be and the environmental impact associated with that growth. 17 00:02:06,070 --> 00:02:14,110 And it was really from there that we kind of got to what we've termed the cooling dilemma, 18 00:02:14,620 --> 00:02:22,359 which is the importance of access to cooling, which in many parts of the world is important to actually health, 19 00:02:22,360 --> 00:02:34,660 human well-being and productivity, and they all foundational to economic development and the growth that can be expected as those needs are met, 20 00:02:35,290 --> 00:02:39,700 but it coming at an environmental cost that we can't afford. 21 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:45,730 And so how do you solve that dilemma? And that's what took us to the fact of, you know, 22 00:02:45,790 --> 00:02:55,210 setting an innovation challenge of finding approaches to cooling the five times less impactful to the climate, 23 00:02:56,230 --> 00:03:02,350 because that would actually solve the cooling dilemma of how can you ensure access to cooling for those that need it, 24 00:03:03,070 --> 00:03:08,080 but at an environmental cost that we can afford. 25 00:03:08,590 --> 00:03:15,310 And you do that by neutralising the impact of the growth and we assess the five times we could do that. 26 00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:30,129 And so I am I kind of started work in 2017 and we spent most of that year kind of rooting out collaborators and funders for the, for the work. 27 00:03:30,130 --> 00:03:40,270 And when we launched it, we launched it alongside Department of Science and Technology and the Government of India and Mission Innovation, 28 00:03:40,270 --> 00:03:42,550 an initiative of the Clean Energy Ministerial. 29 00:03:47,950 --> 00:03:59,260 And if if if I may know, what's your role in the in the competition as an organiser or as a as one of the judges, I suppose, as well. 30 00:03:59,300 --> 00:04:04,390 Right. Okay. Yeah. A little bit of everything. So am I. 31 00:04:04,420 --> 00:04:14,680 And I guess myself representing know my were the initiators, the organiser, the lead initiator, the lead organiser, the lead administrator. 32 00:04:15,130 --> 00:04:21,640 And I was also chair of the Technical Review Committee doing all of the evaluations of 33 00:04:21,640 --> 00:04:26,830 the submissions to the prise and ultimately the selection of the winners of the prise. 34 00:04:29,480 --> 00:04:38,060 About the competition itself. From the technology point of view, is there any specific technology or is it technology agnostic? 35 00:04:38,270 --> 00:04:41,840 What are the parameters that are being set up in this competition? 36 00:04:41,930 --> 00:04:52,040 Yeah, so great question. We tried to set up the, the criteria for the prise in a. 37 00:04:53,170 --> 00:05:01,569 Technology agnostic way so that we didn't embed technology bias, because that's one of the issues with the testing standards in this space. 38 00:05:01,570 --> 00:05:07,150 There is a technology bias to the testing standards because they're designed to test vapour compression, 39 00:05:07,540 --> 00:05:15,519 which is why we actually had a testing approach that was real world simulation of testing, 40 00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:25,300 including field testing, as well as lab testing to ensure that we didn't embed that same technology bias within the prise. 41 00:05:26,830 --> 00:05:38,620 That said, you know, one of the challenges with the prise is how long do you give innovators to develop their tech knowledges? 42 00:05:38,980 --> 00:05:49,450 And on the one side, you want to give them as long as you can, because, you know, especially with some of the early stage technologies, 43 00:05:49,450 --> 00:05:56,530 they need time to be developed and they're not inclined technology to be developed to do prototypes. 44 00:05:56,800 --> 00:06:00,610 On the other side, there is such a thing as prise fatigue. 45 00:06:01,090 --> 00:06:05,110 You lose momentum and you lose interest if you go for too long. 46 00:06:05,710 --> 00:06:10,480 And you know, as I kind of reflect back on the prise, 47 00:06:11,860 --> 00:06:24,790 the only technology bias that I would say that we perhaps ended up with to a small extent was the fact the timeline was effectively a two, 48 00:06:26,020 --> 00:06:37,840 two and a half year timeline, and that may not have been enough early stage, not in-kind technologies to be able to to get to prototype. 49 00:06:38,290 --> 00:06:43,540 And you know, of the eight finalists we selected, there were three that weren't they per compression. 50 00:06:44,740 --> 00:06:47,080 Five of the finalists were vapour compression. 51 00:06:47,740 --> 00:06:57,190 None of the three finalists the were non vapour compression were able to deliver working prototypes for testing. 52 00:06:58,930 --> 00:07:06,669 Those are those companies and two of them were new Start-Ups have now subsequently developed 53 00:07:06,670 --> 00:07:13,300 prototypes that they're going to be are going to be tested to other venues in the future. 54 00:07:16,790 --> 00:07:29,180 I guess that the lesson learnt from the competition that the not inclined has some limitation in terms of the developing time. 55 00:07:29,750 --> 00:07:34,399 Do you think it's a it's a reflection to the fact that the in the cooling space it seems 56 00:07:34,400 --> 00:07:40,850 that globally we have a technological lock in in favour of compression technology. 57 00:07:41,690 --> 00:07:53,900 Yeah. And I think the, the, the lock in, if you think about it, you know, the first residential air conditioner was brought to market in 1926. 58 00:07:55,310 --> 00:08:03,080 Vapour, compression, technology. And obviously there's been some, you know, technological advances that have occurred since. 59 00:08:03,080 --> 00:08:07,160 But it's fundamentally still the same technology and concept. 60 00:08:07,700 --> 00:08:16,070 And the way that the market has driven the industry is looking for more affordable. 61 00:08:16,410 --> 00:08:20,719 When I say affordable from a first cost basis, more affordable solution. 62 00:08:20,720 --> 00:08:26,780 So the the technology has been cost optimised now for nearly 100 years. 63 00:08:27,410 --> 00:08:36,200 And it makes it extremely hard for new technologies to come in and challenge 64 00:08:36,200 --> 00:08:41,810 that incumbent technology that has been cost optimised for over 100 years. 65 00:08:42,200 --> 00:08:47,390 And unless new technology brings new benefits, 66 00:08:48,320 --> 00:08:57,770 it's going to really struggle with the cost level that you look for these products when they're now when when they brought to market, 67 00:08:57,770 --> 00:09:03,020 they were a fraction of the first cost in real terms for one of these units, 68 00:09:03,020 --> 00:09:08,750 today is a fraction of what it was for the first unit that was brought to market in 1926. 69 00:09:11,200 --> 00:09:20,230 Yes. It's very interesting. You mentioned about the cost here because one of the criteria in the enterprise is costs. 70 00:09:20,500 --> 00:09:28,510 Right. Could you comment a bit about how how the competition to reduce costs, how how did it materialise in the competition? 71 00:09:29,110 --> 00:09:32,440 Yeah. So we set up the affordable. 72 00:09:32,530 --> 00:09:34,040 So there's two primary criteria. 73 00:09:34,060 --> 00:09:43,600 One was we wanted to see five times lower climate impact, which comes through a combination of low gwp, refrigerants or no refrigerants at all. 74 00:09:43,990 --> 00:09:49,510 And the other was significantly reduced energy for equivalent cooling output. 75 00:09:50,770 --> 00:09:55,770 The second key criteria was affordability. 76 00:09:55,780 --> 00:10:08,079 And we said at an assessed industrial scale that the product should not cost more than two times the baseline unit. 77 00:10:08,080 --> 00:10:14,680 And the baseline unit we picked was the highest selling unit in India in the year of 2017. 78 00:10:15,410 --> 00:10:23,530 And so that was the benchmark, which was, by the way, it was about $530 installed, cost us dollars. 79 00:10:25,150 --> 00:10:31,390 The finalist units we assessed being in the range of 2 to 3. 80 00:10:31,660 --> 00:10:36,489 So the winning units we assessed of being in the range of 2 to 3 times the first cost, 81 00:10:36,490 --> 00:10:41,889 they actually we assessed being outside of our affordability criteria, 82 00:10:41,890 --> 00:10:52,030 but they were both exceeded on the climate impact closer to the two that were close to two times, but they were above it. 83 00:10:52,030 --> 00:10:57,280 And I think part of that was, you know, their hybrid systems. 84 00:10:57,670 --> 00:11:07,870 And although on the one side that lavatory leveraging materials and componentry from the vapour compression industry, which is cost optimised. 85 00:11:08,140 --> 00:11:09,010 On the other side, 86 00:11:09,010 --> 00:11:19,090 they've got new materials and componentry that isn't cost optimised and is very difficult for us to assess as to what the cost would be at scale. 87 00:11:20,380 --> 00:11:27,400 And so they came out, as I say, in that 2 to 3 times range, but close to the two times. 88 00:11:27,400 --> 00:11:32,770 But it was above it. So in terms of. 89 00:11:33,900 --> 00:11:39,750 Cos it's related to a scaling up prospect of these technologies. 90 00:11:40,890 --> 00:11:47,790 Do you think they're the winning technologies or even the, the finalists. 91 00:11:47,940 --> 00:11:58,810 Are they having. Similar scaling up or of course, the winners, I suppose, have more prospect of scaling up technology. 92 00:11:59,890 --> 00:12:05,980 Yeah. So it's kind of starts when you look at the winning technologies. 93 00:12:06,940 --> 00:12:11,680 You know, as I say, the first cost was resistance 2 to 3 times. 94 00:12:12,310 --> 00:12:16,720 We then looked at what's their lifecycle cost, assuming a ten year life at the air conditioner. 95 00:12:16,870 --> 00:12:24,309 It was less than half of the baseline unit because whereas the baseline unit is maybe costing 96 00:12:24,310 --> 00:12:32,500 around 300 USD a year to operate if it's operated according to conditions as opposed to occupancy, 97 00:12:33,970 --> 00:12:38,950 the winning technologies were less than $100 a year. 98 00:12:38,950 --> 00:12:42,309 They were closer to like $70 a year to operate. 99 00:12:42,310 --> 00:12:49,870 So. So there's the, the higher first cost, but there's a simple payback of about three years. 100 00:12:49,870 --> 00:12:54,639 And then the lifecycle cost is about half. And so the question is, 101 00:12:54,640 --> 00:13:03,280 how do you make that visible to people that are making the buying decisions so that they can be informed and make those decisions? 102 00:13:03,280 --> 00:13:11,919 And the the things that you have to do is the testing standards have to be able to 103 00:13:11,920 --> 00:13:18,969 measure the attributes of these products and how they performed in real world operation, 104 00:13:18,970 --> 00:13:22,150 which today they don't they don't measure humidity well. 105 00:13:22,150 --> 00:13:32,170 And units tend to operate in the real world at much lower levels of aggregate capacity than than what the testing standards measure. 106 00:13:32,620 --> 00:13:41,349 And then we need to have rating systems for the products that put these high performance products in a high tier so that 107 00:13:41,350 --> 00:13:50,350 consumers and buyers can understand what it is they're getting for the extra money that they're that they're paying. 108 00:13:50,680 --> 00:13:57,250 But ultimately, you know, like most new disruptive technologies or products, 109 00:13:58,420 --> 00:14:07,840 they will start scaling in niche sectors and they'll scale in the sectors first where they're going to have long operating hours. 110 00:14:08,320 --> 00:14:18,220 And so if you think of places that have long operating hours or high level of operating hours for their the cooling devices or air conditioners, 111 00:14:18,520 --> 00:14:25,690 you're thinking of perhaps commercial facilities of of restaurants, you know, 112 00:14:25,810 --> 00:14:31,720 places that basically are open all day and needing to keep the indoor environment comfortable. 113 00:14:31,960 --> 00:14:38,770 And then that becomes a step on the scaling and opportunity to access the the broader mass market. 114 00:14:42,730 --> 00:14:46,420 In terms of bringing this to the mass market. 115 00:14:46,510 --> 00:14:55,870 As you say, it starts with a niche application. What's what's the timeline, do you think, for the winning technologies to achieve that? 116 00:14:56,620 --> 00:15:04,570 Yeah, realistically. Yeah, great question. So one of our finalists, so one of our winners, I should say, 117 00:15:05,710 --> 00:15:16,540 which also is the the market share leader in this sector, has committed to bring that technology to market by 2025. 118 00:15:17,020 --> 00:15:23,020 And they've committed to bring it to market and to make it affordable for for the buyers. 119 00:15:23,020 --> 00:15:35,260 So and we've also had a finalist who made that same commitment that they would bring a five times lower climate impact unit to market by 2025. 120 00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:40,450 And so we've got two major corporations that have made that commitment. 121 00:15:40,870 --> 00:15:46,929 So the work that we need to do now is to ensure that the market is trying to be able 122 00:15:46,930 --> 00:15:54,790 to recognise the performance attributes of these units and to have performance 123 00:15:54,790 --> 00:16:02,050 ladders where they're not sitting in the same category as a unit that uses twice 124 00:16:02,560 --> 00:16:06,460 as much energy for the cooling output because that's the top category today. 125 00:16:06,760 --> 00:16:09,120 They're sitting at a level, you know, 126 00:16:09,250 --> 00:16:17,920 that's maybe three or four levels up in the performance ladder so that they can be recognised and that will help stimulate demand. 127 00:16:18,910 --> 00:16:23,110 But the commitment to supply from industry is already there. 128 00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:31,450 Okay. I guess it's similar with the A-plus plus issue and other white goods that. 129 00:16:31,690 --> 00:16:40,570 Yes, it is. Increase the plus. How far will you go with the plus before you creating a new a new set of categories. 130 00:16:40,620 --> 00:16:45,249 Yeah. Yeah. And the plus things doesn't work because people think well enough is really good. 131 00:16:45,250 --> 00:16:47,650 Why would I want to pay more for an A-plus? 132 00:16:48,700 --> 00:16:55,360 It's got to you've got to redo the performance ladder on the scale so that people can make can make the right decisions. 133 00:16:58,060 --> 00:17:04,540 In terms of the users, the end users of this feature technologies, 134 00:17:05,710 --> 00:17:19,060 how do you think the results of this competition should be communicated in order to avoid the potential of rebound effect in the future? 135 00:17:19,450 --> 00:17:25,630 The fact that it has lower climate impact, more efficient, let's use more of it. 136 00:17:26,470 --> 00:17:36,790 Yeah. So, you know, it's kind of in a way for iamai to do a technology prise was kind of interesting because OMA 137 00:17:36,790 --> 00:17:43,689 is known as being an organisation that thinks about whole systems and how do you optimise. 138 00:17:43,690 --> 00:17:54,759 And I think that the pillars that exist today have to continually be reinforced and that is how do urban planning and 139 00:17:54,760 --> 00:18:07,389 building design that we reduce cooling loads within the urban environment and then through the kind of behaviour, 140 00:18:07,390 --> 00:18:10,540 influence and modification and controls, 141 00:18:11,290 --> 00:18:20,860 how do we reduce demand for cooling and then finding the most efficient technologies to have the least climate impact to actually meet that? 142 00:18:21,800 --> 00:18:33,709 Demand. And it's it's not enough to build thermally inefficient buildings and put a very efficient cooling device within there. 143 00:18:33,710 --> 00:18:43,640 We still have to do all of those things to be able to mitigate the climate impact associated with cooling and ensure 144 00:18:43,640 --> 00:18:51,470 a more comfortable urban environment and a more comfortable world for those of us that a habitat habitat in. 145 00:18:57,680 --> 00:19:02,680 In terms of the other stakeholders you mentioned about about standard bodies needs to 146 00:19:02,880 --> 00:19:12,080 re-evaluate their the way of standard or of the standards to test the cooling equipment. 147 00:19:14,700 --> 00:19:21,750 What's the what's the next step? What what can they learn from this cooling global cooling prise results? 148 00:19:21,930 --> 00:19:29,860 Yeah, so we did. Well, we're testing in the whole apartment building concurrent. 149 00:19:29,880 --> 00:19:36,790 We ran all the units and the baseline units as well as we bought the best available technology that we could find in India. 150 00:19:36,790 --> 00:19:41,580 And we tested that to installed in real world apartment, ran it for a whole month. 151 00:19:42,480 --> 00:19:48,480 We put them in a lab that simulated a four years climatic conditions of temperature and humidity. 152 00:19:49,200 --> 00:20:00,570 And we then made it testing in accordance with the Indian test standards which were based on ISO and the. 153 00:20:01,680 --> 00:20:11,820 Real world performance. The differences that we saw between the baseline and the winning technologies, the winning technologies used. 154 00:20:14,140 --> 00:20:22,960 Over 75% less electricity to maintain the same indoor conditions as the baseline unit. 155 00:20:23,770 --> 00:20:38,470 But when we did the acid test, which, as I say, was based upon the ISO standards, only around 70% of that benefit showed up. 156 00:20:39,040 --> 00:20:42,910 So we had 30% of benefit that didn't show up. 157 00:20:43,420 --> 00:20:54,040 And that was related to how the units of the winning technologies performed much more efficiently in dealing with the latent loads, 158 00:20:54,040 --> 00:21:04,360 all the moisture in the air, and that they were able to operate more efficiently at lower percentage levels of capacity. 159 00:21:05,440 --> 00:21:12,219 And so there's things that we need to do to inform next generation test standards on. 160 00:21:12,220 --> 00:21:18,760 There's also the fact that the testing today is not load based. 161 00:21:19,690 --> 00:21:30,200 The manufacturers fix the the drives for the technologies are 100% capacity and 50% capacity 162 00:21:30,200 --> 00:21:35,080 is basically a capacity based test as opposed to a load based test where it runs freely. 163 00:21:36,940 --> 00:21:45,729 And so we're working we will be working over the next year with Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories here 164 00:21:45,730 --> 00:21:55,660 in the US and cept University in India that undertook the testing to identify the modifications, 165 00:21:55,660 --> 00:22:08,320 suggested modifications to current test standards that would enable the benefits of real world operational performance to actually be measured. 166 00:22:09,490 --> 00:22:15,280 Because if you know this is the target, the standards of the target that the manufacturers aim for, 167 00:22:15,700 --> 00:22:22,960 and we're causing them to aim at something that isn't replicating what happens in the real world. 168 00:22:22,970 --> 00:22:30,430 So we need to move those standards so they start to align with real world operation. 169 00:22:30,820 --> 00:22:34,750 And so we give manufacturers the right target to aim for, 170 00:22:35,170 --> 00:22:41,950 and that's then going to ensure that there's demand for these products in the market in the future. 171 00:22:44,840 --> 00:22:50,899 We've been discussing about the increasing in the efficiency which related to 172 00:22:50,900 --> 00:22:57,620 the indirect impact of air conditioner in terms of global warming potential. 173 00:22:57,980 --> 00:23:03,440 If I may, I would like to go back into the D direct emission in this case from the refrigerants. 174 00:23:03,890 --> 00:23:13,300 How does the the winning. The winning teams addressed this problem with the high gwp refrigerant. 175 00:23:13,960 --> 00:23:18,070 So they basically used low pressure, low gwp refrigerants, 176 00:23:18,070 --> 00:23:27,100 low pressure refrigerants helps with the efficiency and obviously low gwp helps with the direct emissions and also pulls down the climate impact. 177 00:23:27,550 --> 00:23:39,310 To give you the relative numbers, I think our baseline unit, which was an R 22 unit, had a GWP of 1762 finalist. 178 00:23:39,310 --> 00:23:57,400 One was using refrigerant with a gwp of less than one, which was an HMO blend, and the other was using a low gwp HFC which has a gwp of 138. 179 00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:12,730 So they were using gwp of their refrigerants were less than well less than 10% of what's in typical units today. 180 00:24:13,120 --> 00:24:17,199 And so it was an important part of the test to be able to test how these refrigerants 181 00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:24,820 would work in very high ambient conditions and if that would be performance degradation, 182 00:24:25,180 --> 00:24:31,329 because we were testing them up to 45 degrees centigrade ambient conditions and they their 183 00:24:31,330 --> 00:24:37,690 performance did not degrade using these these newer refrigerants for this application. 184 00:24:41,390 --> 00:24:52,250 So I suppose the new refrigerants of course also needs to comply with other aspects like safety and flammability and toxicity. 185 00:24:52,970 --> 00:24:57,440 Yeah, these are both low toxicity. Medium. 186 00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:00,920 I think there's a2l for flammability for both. 187 00:25:01,700 --> 00:25:05,870 So they're not highly flammable, not not highly toxic. 188 00:25:06,020 --> 00:25:15,290 As I say, that low pressure, which helps with efficiency and and low gwp and low ozone depletion potential. 189 00:25:18,710 --> 00:25:28,700 I think. We arrive into the end of the of the interview here, perhaps one one last questions for me. 190 00:25:29,300 --> 00:25:35,080 What's the next steps for RMI after after this global cooling prise? 191 00:25:35,090 --> 00:25:39,200 What's the next step in the field of cooling for for RMI. Yeah. 192 00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:43,250 So we're, we're basically. 193 00:25:46,430 --> 00:25:52,310 Go to bed. Another year's work to do in relation to informing test standards. 194 00:25:53,720 --> 00:26:05,450 Other things that we're doing in this space. We're currently developing a Sustainable Urban Cooling Handbook on behalf of Unit 195 00:26:06,710 --> 00:26:17,150 Global Covenant of Mayors and the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Programme to really help. 196 00:26:19,010 --> 00:26:31,410 With the inform the decisions of the right steps in the right order for cooling down our urban environment. 197 00:26:31,430 --> 00:26:40,040 So kind of stepping back out to a whole systems approach which needs to be where we start, 198 00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:46,160 even though we need to solve each level as we have hopefully with the global cooling prise, 199 00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:51,799 we still need to look at this from a whole systems approach first because that's where we 200 00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:59,080 find the the the better and the more economical answers to addressing these challenges. 201 00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:08,840 Great. Yeah. That concludes our sessions for discussion. 202 00:27:09,260 --> 00:27:15,590 Terrific. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed for your time and the insightful discussion on the global cooling price. 203 00:27:16,490 --> 00:27:22,069 Yeah, now it is a pleasure to join you to do an outing and hope to discuss about other cooling 204 00:27:22,070 --> 00:27:28,370 issues in the next iteration of the podcast for the Future of Cooling Programme. 205 00:27:30,180 --> 00:27:33,840 Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Bye bye. 206 00:27:34,740 --> 00:27:35,160 Bye bye.