HVAC Industry in America Budgets $5bn R&D Project

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Stephen Yurek is the president and CEO at the Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute in America and he has said that the American HVAC sector is going to invest over $5 billion into research to develop refrigerants and machines over the next 10 years.

He said, “Close to $2 billion has been spent by the industry since 2009 researching energy-efficient equipment and the utilisation of low GWP-refrigerants and over the next 10 years, the HVACR industry will invest an additional $5 billion of research and development and capital expenditures to develop and commercialise low-GWP technologies.”

He made this announcement at a function on Environmental Quality that was sponsored by the White House Council. Attendees at the event included Ernest Moniz who is the Energy Secretary, Gina McCarthy the Environmental Protection Agency Minister as well as Todd Stern who is the State Department Special Envoy for Climate Change, among others.

Mr Yurek talked about the positive changes that the air conditioning industry was making especially with its proactive measures to become more environmentally friendly. “During the past decade, the industry has worked diligently to reduce the potential impact on the Earth’s climate of refrigerants used in our equipment.

“The industry is committed to working with the international community in transitioning away from high-GWP refrigerants in a managed and orderly process, and this research is a tangible part of that commitment.”

Arkema produces refrigerants and they have committed to reduce their GHG emissions by 30% by the year 2020. On top of this Coco-Cola will be aiming to have 100% of their new cold drink equipment to be HFC free. Currently Coco-Cola have 1 million units of HDC-free equipment which means that they have achieved 30% of their target already.

Other brands that have set themselves targets are DuPont, Honeywell, PepsiCo and Red Bull. By the time we reach 2025 DuPont have said that they will have reduced their greenhouse gases by 90 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the US and worldwide by 245 million tonnes. Honeywell will have cut their high-GWP HFCs by 50% by 2020 and will spend $880 million on research and development. PepsiCo have said that by 2020 their point of sale equipment will be HFC free and Red Bull have committed to ordering 32,000 environmentally friendly hydrocarbon coolers by 2015.

This is a huge step in the right direction for the industry becoming more environmentally friendly, especially in America.

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