German groups warn of refrigeration “extinction”
GERMANY: Market groups are pleading with their customers and their consumers to urgently draw the interest of politicians to the “major problems” posed by the F-gas revision and PFAS proposals.
A position assertion/letter generated by four of the foremost market bodies claims that the current drafts of the amendment to the European F-gas regulation and the proposed PFAS limits threaten many refrigeration units with extinction.
It warns members that the regulations, if passed, have the opportunity to limit the use of fluorinated refrigerants in refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump methods, earning them possibly unavailable or only readily available to a incredibly limited extent, in both new and current systems.
The teams – contractors overall body VDKF, the federal guild BIV, refrigeration and air conditioning heat pumps affiliation ZVKKW and the Bundesfachschule Kälte-Klima-Technik training organisation – pressure the urgency of action with the EU Parliament owing to vote on the F-gas regulation at the end of this thirty day period March.
Cases
To tension the probable outcomes, the German alliance present a amount of illustrations of the probable effects and penalties of the two regulations.
It cites the circumstance of a German information broadcaster investing practically €1m this yr in a new essential refrigeration program with F-gases for studio and server cooling. The set up corresponds to all presently legitimate ordinances and laws and would usually have a lifespan of 15 to 20 a long time. Having said that, the alliance points out that from 2024, there is no longer any assure that refrigerant can be refilled in the celebration of a refrigerant leak, which endangers continued operation. Up to and including 2029, service would nonetheless be permitted with reprocessed or recycled refrigerant but this is by now in restricted offer now and by 2024 it will be in shorter source.
Other firms are explained to be struggling with the identical dilemma: a manufacturer of veterinary merchandise who put in 6 break up air conditioners with 130kW output in 2022, a slaughterhouse with a refrigeration method installed in 2022 and a district healthcare facility in Decreased Saxony that mounted two chillers very last calendar year to cool a new making with 9 running rooms.
It is claimed that a comparable state of affairs applies to the tens of countless numbers of bakers, butchers and restaurateurs who involve refrigeration techniques. According to there alliance, most of these units use F-gases and a lot of of these even now have a long support lifestyle. In the function of a reduction of refrigerant, they could not be place back into procedure. It claims that that in these situations CO2 devices are many instances far more pricey iand are neither economical nor vitality-economical to function.
Outcomes will also be felt across industries, including Germany’s important automotive marketplace, wherever refrigeration is required for environmental and climatic simulation techniques. Due to the temperature ranges and the security requirements, the alliance states the use of flammable refrigerants are not attainable and CO2 is not acceptable for temperatures under -50°C.
It provides that if no refrigerant was obtainable for support applications in the event of leaks, tens of hundreds of air conditioning techniques in lodges, clinical techniques, office environment properties, old people’s houses, private apartments, and so on would grow to be inoperable.
A massive new Hamburg hotel, awarded a prize for its electricity performance in 2018, would be not able to change its F-gas-centered heating and cooling process. Its replacement with a “natural” refrigerant procedure is technically unfeasible and in the occasion of a refrigerant loss from the method, the resort would have to cease operations if the refrigerant essential for upkeep was no longer accessible.
The doc can be located and downloaded below.
