Living beyond our means: Australia’s refrigerant reckoning

Australia is using more refrigerant than it imports and will face a reckoning when stockpiles run out. That was the headline message from the latest Cold Hard Facts report, presented as a “teaser” at ARBS 2024 this week ahead of a full release in July.

This version, Cold Hard Facts 4, involved a full rewrite of the model rather than an incremental update. Notably, the projections now extend to 2036, when Australia will have theoretically achieved the 85 per cent reduction in HFC consumption that we have committed to under the Kigali Amendment.

But the latest report casts doubt on whether this can be achieved without the HVAC&R sector undergoing a major and potentially disruptive shift.

The big numbers

The Cold Hard Facts reports are produced by the Expert Group for the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW). One of the major benefits the series has provided since its first edition in 2007 has been to highlight the big numbers that help tell the story of Australia’s HVAC&R sector.

In this edition, those headline numbers have not changed significantly. Refrigeration and air conditioning is still estimated to use 24 per cent of all electricity generated in Australia, and still contributes about 12 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions – mostly as indirect emissions.

There has been a reduction in total emissions from HVAC&R – from 65.1Mt in 2016 to 58.5Mt in 2022. According to Expert Group Principal Consultant Graeme Dewerson, who presented a sneak preview of the report at ARBS, this was mostly due to the grid decarbonising. Cold Hard Facts 4 estimates an HVAC&R workforce of 370,000 people, or 2.6 per cent of total employment in Australia. This includes 83,600 ARC-licensed technicians.

Key trends

The refrigerant bank grew in total volume by 3 per cent between 2020 and 2022. This is attributed mainly to an increase in the use of heat pumps. In terms of CO₂e, the bank appears to have peaked in 2021, and is predicted to continue shrinking with the wider adoption of natural and lower-GWP refrigerants.

Contributing to the reduction, R32 has been rapidly adopted in small and medium air conditioning applications. Natural refrigerants also continue to exhibit growth in the bank, particularly CO₂ in supermarkets and hydrocarbons in portable AC and self-contained refrigeration equipment.

Use of HFO/HFC blends is also increasing steadily, up to 62 tonnes in 2022. This includes R448A, R449A, R452A and R513A. R1234ze, a straight HFO, is also showing growth in chiller and commercial heat pump applications.

Causes for concern

The slide Dewerson described as perhaps the key takeaway showed the HFC phase-down steps and the refrigerant usage projection in megatonnes (Mt) of CO₂e.

The goal is under 2Mt, but the projection is more than double that, at just under 5Mt. The two major contributors to this projected blow-out are refrigerants that have previously received plenty of attention: R404A, used in small and medium commercial refrigeration; and R134a, heavily used mobile air conditioning.

R404A import and use remains stubbornly high, despite reductions in the bulk import quota. From 2021 to 2022, import of this refrigerant actually rose from 581 to 629 tonnes. And usage outstrips import – as is the case for a number of refrigerants.

“We’re living beyond our means,” said Dewerson. “We’re using more than we’re importing.”

According to Dewerson, the reduction in the HFC quota that was expected to curtail the use of high-GWP refrigerants like R404A hasn’t yet been felt on the ground because of a stockpile imported in 2017, before HFC import quotas came into force. He predicts that market factors will cover some of the eventual adjustment, such as greater use of recycled refrigerant, but it will require a shift.

“We’re not going off a cliff, but we’re certainly not going in the right direction.”

Another area of concern is R134a, heavily used in mobile air conditioning. There has been some movement away from this refrigerant, with an estimated 17–22 per cent of new vehicles imported into Australia in 2022 containing HFO-1234yf.

Next steps

Dewerson ended the presentation by underlining the scale of the challenge Australia is facing. At some point, he noted, refrigerant use will need to decrease to line up with imports. The most obvious areas for attention – potentially through government policy – are R404A and R134a.