Right. Welcome. This is the future of coding podcasts.
In this session we will discuss about the global cooling prise with our guest, Ian Campbell.
Ian is a senior fellow at the Rocky Mountain Institute and has decades of experience in the cooling sector.
Previously, he held various leadership position with Johnson Controls and York International.
So welcome, Ian, and thank you for being here today.
Yeah. Thank you. Look forward to the discussion and the opportunity here.
Okay. For a start, could you please tell us just a bit more about the global cooling price,
the history behind it, and what's the role of Rocky Mountain Institute?
Yeah. So global cooling prise is an innovation challenge and it's a challenge that we launched in November 2018 to find
a residential cooling solution or technology that could deliver comparable comfort to the products we use today.
But with five times lower climate impact through its goods lifecycle, why did we launch the prise?
I think that there's probably 2017.
There's a number of things going on that came together that kind of shone a spotlight on the cooling space.
I think first we had the Kigali amendment to the Montreal Protocol for the phase down of HFCS happened at the end of 2016.
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
spoke about what the growth in cooling was likely to be and the environmental impact associated with that growth.
And it was really from there that we kind of got to what we've termed the cooling dilemma,
which is the importance of access to cooling, which in many parts of the world is important to actually health,
human well-being and productivity, and they all foundational to economic development and the growth that can be expected as those needs are met,
but it coming at an environmental cost that we can't afford.
And so how do you solve that dilemma? And that's what took us to the fact of, you know,
setting an innovation challenge of finding approaches to cooling the five times less impactful to the climate,
because that would actually solve the cooling dilemma of how can you ensure access to cooling for those that need it,
but at an environmental cost that we can afford.
And you do that by neutralising the impact of the growth and we assess the five times we could do that.
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.
And when we launched it, we launched it alongside Department of Science and Technology and the Government of India and Mission Innovation,
an initiative of the Clean Energy Ministerial.
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.
Right. Okay. Yeah. A little bit of everything. So am I.
And I guess myself representing know my were the initiators, the organiser, the lead initiator, the lead organiser, the lead administrator.
And I was also chair of the Technical Review Committee doing all of the evaluations of
the submissions to the prise and ultimately the selection of the winners of the prise.
About the competition itself. From the technology point of view, is there any specific technology or is it technology agnostic?
What are the parameters that are being set up in this competition?
Yeah, so great question. We tried to set up the, the criteria for the prise in a.
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.
There is a technology bias to the testing standards because they're designed to test vapour compression,
which is why we actually had a testing approach that was real world simulation of testing,
including field testing, as well as lab testing to ensure that we didn't embed that same technology bias within the prise.
That said, you know, one of the challenges with the prise is how long do you give innovators to develop their tech knowledges?
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,
they need time to be developed and they're not inclined technology to be developed to do prototypes.
On the other side, there is such a thing as prise fatigue.
You lose momentum and you lose interest if you go for too long.
And you know, as I kind of reflect back on the prise,
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,
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.
And you know, of the eight finalists we selected, there were three that weren't they per compression.
Five of the finalists were vapour compression.
None of the three finalists the were non vapour compression were able to deliver working prototypes for testing.
Those are those companies and two of them were new Start-Ups have now subsequently developed
prototypes that they're going to be are going to be tested to other venues in the future.
I guess that the lesson learnt from the competition that the not inclined has some limitation in terms of the developing time.
Do you think it's a it's a reflection to the fact that the in the cooling space it seems
that globally we have a technological lock in in favour of compression technology.
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.
Vapour, compression, technology. And obviously there's been some, you know, technological advances that have occurred since.
But it's fundamentally still the same technology and concept.
And the way that the market has driven the industry is looking for more affordable.
When I say affordable from a first cost basis, more affordable solution.
So the the technology has been cost optimised now for nearly 100 years.
And it makes it extremely hard for new technologies to come in and challenge
that incumbent technology that has been cost optimised for over 100 years.
And unless new technology brings new benefits,
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,
they were a fraction of the first cost in real terms for one of these units,
today is a fraction of what it was for the first unit that was brought to market in 1926.
Yes. It's very interesting. You mentioned about the cost here because one of the criteria in the enterprise is costs.
Right. Could you comment a bit about how how the competition to reduce costs, how how did it materialise in the competition?
Yeah. So we set up the affordable.
So there's two primary criteria.
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.
And the other was significantly reduced energy for equivalent cooling output.
The second key criteria was affordability.
And we said at an assessed industrial scale that the product should not cost more than two times the baseline unit.
And the baseline unit we picked was the highest selling unit in India in the year of 2017.
And so that was the benchmark, which was, by the way, it was about $530 installed, cost us dollars.
The finalist units we assessed being in the range of 2 to 3.
So the winning units we assessed of being in the range of 2 to 3 times the first cost,
they actually we assessed being outside of our affordability criteria,
but they were both exceeded on the climate impact closer to the two that were close to two times, but they were above it.
And I think part of that was, you know, their hybrid systems.
And although on the one side that lavatory leveraging materials and componentry from the vapour compression industry, which is cost optimised.
On the other side,
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.
And so they came out, as I say, in that 2 to 3 times range, but close to the two times.
But it was above it. So in terms of.
Cos it's related to a scaling up prospect of these technologies.
Do you think they're the winning technologies or even the, the finalists.
Are they having. Similar scaling up or of course, the winners, I suppose, have more prospect of scaling up technology.
Yeah. So it's kind of starts when you look at the winning technologies.
You know, as I say, the first cost was resistance 2 to 3 times.
We then looked at what's their lifecycle cost, assuming a ten year life at the air conditioner.
It was less than half of the baseline unit because whereas the baseline unit is maybe costing
around 300 USD a year to operate if it's operated according to conditions as opposed to occupancy,
the winning technologies were less than $100 a year.
They were closer to like $70 a year to operate.
So. So there's the, the higher first cost, but there's a simple payback of about three years.
And then the lifecycle cost is about half. And so the question is,
how do you make that visible to people that are making the buying decisions so that they can be informed and make those decisions?
And the the things that you have to do is the testing standards have to be able to
measure the attributes of these products and how they performed in real world operation,
which today they don't they don't measure humidity well.
And units tend to operate in the real world at much lower levels of aggregate capacity than than what the testing standards measure.
And then we need to have rating systems for the products that put these high performance products in a high tier so that
consumers and buyers can understand what it is they're getting for the extra money that they're that they're paying.
But ultimately, you know, like most new disruptive technologies or products,
they will start scaling in niche sectors and they'll scale in the sectors first where they're going to have long operating hours.
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,
you're thinking of perhaps commercial facilities of of restaurants, you know,
places that basically are open all day and needing to keep the indoor environment comfortable.
And then that becomes a step on the scaling and opportunity to access the the broader mass market.
In terms of bringing this to the mass market.
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?
Yeah, realistically. Yeah, great question. So one of our finalists, so one of our winners, I should say,
which also is the the market share leader in this sector, has committed to bring that technology to market by 2025.
And they've committed to bring it to market and to make it affordable for for the buyers.
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.
And so we've got two major corporations that have made that commitment.
So the work that we need to do now is to ensure that the market is trying to be able
to recognise the performance attributes of these units and to have performance
ladders where they're not sitting in the same category as a unit that uses twice
as much energy for the cooling output because that's the top category today.
They're sitting at a level, you know,
that's maybe three or four levels up in the performance ladder so that they can be recognised and that will help stimulate demand.
But the commitment to supply from industry is already there.
Okay. I guess it's similar with the A-plus plus issue and other white goods that.
Yes, it is. Increase the plus. How far will you go with the plus before you creating a new a new set of categories.
Yeah. Yeah. And the plus things doesn't work because people think well enough is really good.
Why would I want to pay more for an A-plus?
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.
In terms of the users, the end users of this feature technologies,
how do you think the results of this competition should be communicated in order to avoid the potential of rebound effect in the future?
The fact that it has lower climate impact, more efficient, let's use more of it.
Yeah. So, you know, it's kind of in a way for iamai to do a technology prise was kind of interesting because OMA
is known as being an organisation that thinks about whole systems and how do you optimise.
And I think that the pillars that exist today have to continually be reinforced and that is how do urban planning and
building design that we reduce cooling loads within the urban environment and then through the kind of behaviour,
influence and modification and controls,
how do we reduce demand for cooling and then finding the most efficient technologies to have the least climate impact to actually meet that?
Demand. And it's it's not enough to build thermally inefficient buildings and put a very efficient cooling device within there.
We still have to do all of those things to be able to mitigate the climate impact associated with cooling and ensure
a more comfortable urban environment and a more comfortable world for those of us that a habitat habitat in.
In terms of the other stakeholders you mentioned about about standard bodies needs to
re-evaluate their the way of standard or of the standards to test the cooling equipment.
What's the what's the next step? What what can they learn from this cooling global cooling prise results?
Yeah, so we did. Well, we're testing in the whole apartment building concurrent.
We ran all the units and the baseline units as well as we bought the best available technology that we could find in India.
And we tested that to installed in real world apartment, ran it for a whole month.
We put them in a lab that simulated a four years climatic conditions of temperature and humidity.
And we then made it testing in accordance with the Indian test standards which were based on ISO and the.
Real world performance. The differences that we saw between the baseline and the winning technologies, the winning technologies used.
Over 75% less electricity to maintain the same indoor conditions as the baseline unit.
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.
So we had 30% of benefit that didn't show up.
And that was related to how the units of the winning technologies performed much more efficiently in dealing with the latent loads,
all the moisture in the air, and that they were able to operate more efficiently at lower percentage levels of capacity.
And so there's things that we need to do to inform next generation test standards on.
There's also the fact that the testing today is not load based.
The manufacturers fix the the drives for the technologies are 100% capacity and 50% capacity
is basically a capacity based test as opposed to a load based test where it runs freely.
And so we're working we will be working over the next year with Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories here
in the US and cept University in India that undertook the testing to identify the modifications,
suggested modifications to current test standards that would enable the benefits of real world operational performance to actually be measured.
Because if you know this is the target, the standards of the target that the manufacturers aim for,
and we're causing them to aim at something that isn't replicating what happens in the real world.
So we need to move those standards so they start to align with real world operation.
And so we give manufacturers the right target to aim for,
and that's then going to ensure that there's demand for these products in the market in the future.
We've been discussing about the increasing in the efficiency which related to
the indirect impact of air conditioner in terms of global warming potential.
If I may, I would like to go back into the D direct emission in this case from the refrigerants.
How does the the winning. The winning teams addressed this problem with the high gwp refrigerant.
So they basically used low pressure, low gwp refrigerants,
low pressure refrigerants helps with the efficiency and obviously low gwp helps with the direct emissions and also pulls down the climate impact.
To give you the relative numbers, I think our baseline unit, which was an R 22 unit, had a GWP of 1762 finalist.
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.
So they were using gwp of their refrigerants were less than well less than 10% of what's in typical units today.
And so it was an important part of the test to be able to test how these refrigerants
would work in very high ambient conditions and if that would be performance degradation,
because we were testing them up to 45 degrees centigrade ambient conditions and they their
performance did not degrade using these these newer refrigerants for this application.
So I suppose the new refrigerants of course also needs to comply with other aspects like safety and flammability and toxicity.
Yeah, these are both low toxicity. Medium.
I think there's a2l for flammability for both.
So they're not highly flammable, not not highly toxic.
As I say, that low pressure, which helps with efficiency and and low gwp and low ozone depletion potential.
I think. We arrive into the end of the of the interview here, perhaps one one last questions for me.
What's the next steps for RMI after after this global cooling prise?
What's the next step in the field of cooling for for RMI. Yeah.
So we're, we're basically.
Go to bed. Another year's work to do in relation to informing test standards.
Other things that we're doing in this space. We're currently developing a Sustainable Urban Cooling Handbook on behalf of Unit
Global Covenant of Mayors and the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Programme to really help.
With the inform the decisions of the right steps in the right order for cooling down our urban environment.
So kind of stepping back out to a whole systems approach which needs to be where we start,
even though we need to solve each level as we have hopefully with the global cooling prise,
we still need to look at this from a whole systems approach first because that's where we
find the the the better and the more economical answers to addressing these challenges.
Great. Yeah. That concludes our sessions for discussion.
Terrific. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed for your time and the insightful discussion on the global cooling price.
Yeah, now it is a pleasure to join you to do an outing and hope to discuss about other cooling
issues in the next iteration of the podcast for the Future of Cooling Programme.
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Bye bye.
Bye bye.