IIR publishes life-cycle guide

FRANCE: The International Institute of Refrigeration has published guidelines for evaluating the life cycle climate performance of refrigeration systems.

Evaluating the Life Cycle Climate Performance (LCCP) for refrigeration equipment is a necessity. Focus is too often put on partial elements of the environmental impact of equipment, especially refrigerants, while the IIR has shown, for example, that all refrigeration equipment, air conditioning included, represent 17% of the global electricity consumption.

While climate change is an increasingly important global concern, discussions about the climate impact is often limited to the GWP of the fluids used. This is far too restrictive, says the IIR, as it does not take into account the real emissions of fluids, and ignores indirect emissions, especially those related to energy use over the life time of the equipment.

The IIR’s LCCP working group has developed this guideline and an abbreviated guideline for performing LCCP calculations for air conditioning, heat pumps and refrigeration systems with recommended assumptions and data sources for different types of units.

The guide aims to provide designers, facility operators, manufacturers, and policy makers a way to effectively evaluate and compare the environmental impact of different systems over the course of their lifetimes. A sample calculation and excel tool are included for a residential heat pump.

View or download copy here.