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SINGAPORE: Located near the equator, Singapore is hot and humid all year round, making it almost necessary for Singaporeans to have an air conditioning system.
Singapore has more air conditioning installations per capita than any of its Southeast Asian neighbors. Approximately 99 percent of the condos have air conditioning installed.
The number of air conditioning installations is expected to increase with the increase in the number of residential and commercial building developments, growing by 73 percent from 2010 to 2030, according to NUS Professor Lee Poh Seng, deputy director of the Research Center. Energy and Technology.
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The use of air conditioning in homes and buildings may seem trivial, but this sector alone constitutes 19% of Singapore’s carbon emissions, making it the second highest source of emissions in Singapore after the sector. industrial, which represents 60% of emissions.
Of the 19 percent, a considerable part is said to be generated from air conditioning, according to State Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Dr. Amy Khor, in Parliament in November 2019.
Air conditioning accounts for up to a quarter of the average household electricity consumption in Singapore.
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A HUGE CARBON FOOTPRINT
A standard 2-kilowatt air conditioning unit that can comfortably cool a room of up to 20 square meters produces around 1.4 tons of carbon emissions per year, assuming it is turned on 20 days a month, eight hours a day.
If there are four such air conditioning units in an HDB home, they will generate approximately 5.6 tons of carbon emissions per year.
An air conditioner in the home.
By comparison, a 35-inch flat-screen plasma TV generates 0.25 tons of carbon emissions per year, assuming it is turned on for about six hours a day.
The carbon footprint of using a washing machine is much lower with 0.05 tonnes of carbon emissions, assuming around 180 washes per year.
The carbon emissions from air conditioning in a typical HDB home clearly outweigh the emissions from other appliances.
In fact, the annual missions generated by the use of air conditioning in a HDB floor with four air conditioning units are greater than the annual emissions generated by driving a car, which amounts to approximately 4.6 tons per year.
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That number increases during periods of fog. A NUS study published in August showed that Singapore condos turn on the air conditioning for an additional 10 hours a month when PM2.5 rises by 10 micrograms per cubic meter.
Even then, the carbon emissions of Singapore’s residential units pale in comparison to those that arise from commercial buildings.
Cooling systems consume between 40 and 50 percent of a building’s energy, contributing to the urban heat island effect.
The air in built-up areas in the Central Business District (CBD), where air conditioning systems were running non-stop before the coronavirus, is about 7 degrees Celsius warmer than in greener pastures.
Singapore’s regular cooling approach is expected to contribute around 4.89 mega tonnes of carbon emissions by 2030.
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PROBLEMATIC ADDICTION
While air conditioning has allowed an entire nation to prosper and be productive at work and at home, Singaporeans know that their air conditioning habits are problematic.
(Photo: Unsplash / Kate Sade)
A 2017 survey by Eco-Business found that 68 percent of Singaporean respondents encountered excessive cooling of public places such as offices, shopping malls and cinemas.
This raises the question of why building owners keep indoor air conditioning temperatures at arctic cold levels.
The air conditioning setting in the building should depend on the outside temperature and humidity. However, they remain unchanged during periods of heavy rain or cooler weather in certain months of the year.
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Commercial buildings stay 40 percent cooler than they should when building owners tend to plan for the hottest days and don’t turn off the air conditioning on the colder days.
For Singapore to achieve its updated climate commitment that total greenhouse emissions stop growing by 2030 and halve by 2050, big changes are needed to address its addiction to air conditioning. This can be achieved by adopting passive building designs, more efficient technologies, and supporting a culture change in cooling consumption.
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ECOLOGICAL COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS
The good news is that there has been a shift in recent years to establish rules and regulations that reverse the tide of air conditioning’s gigantic carbon footprint.
All new buildings must meet the minimum standards established for sustainability under the Building Control regulations.
Revisions to the Green Mark Scheme passed after 2017 further encourage building owners and developers to achieve greater energy efficiency by reducing a building’s cooling demand and adopting more efficient cooling systems.
Approximately 40 percent of gross building surfaces meet these standards.
Inside Funan Mall. (Photo: Gaya Chandramohan)
The implementation of a carbon tax will also push developers towards low-energy technologies. For example, the cold water system at the Funan shopping center uses a non-polluting coolant, which has saved five kilotonnes of carbon emissions, approximately that of 1,500 cars.
Passive design, which helps buildings stay cool without air conditioning, has also been more common, whether it’s the use of industrial fans at 313 Orchard or the use of self-shaded building shapes at the Tahir Foundation Connexion in the Singapore Management University.
The mandatory energy labeling scheme has been improved over the years, for example by making energy labels on advertising material mandatory from November 2019. This encourages and helps consumers to purchase more efficient home air conditioning from from an energy point of view, as brand and price remain primary factors. shopping.
The Minimum Energy Performance Standards complement such efforts by phasing out the least efficient appliances from the market.
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These efforts have received new impetus after the then Minister of Environment and Water Resources, Masagos Zulkifli, announced in March that refrigerators and air conditioners will also have an eco-label, with bans on variants with high global warming potential in the last trimester. of 2022.
A new training and certification scheme for technicians who carry out the installation, maintenance and dismantling of domestic air conditioners will also ensure that the refrigerators are properly managed, preventing the leakage of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.
Such efforts will also strengthen the recovery, recovery and destruction of e-waste, required by NEA, which will require a toxic industrial waste collector license.
While Singapore’s evolving regulatory landscape seeks to shape business decisions on air conditioning, technology has also been an enabler. Currently, the compressor technology of traditional air conditioning units only achieves 6 to 8 percent of the theoretical maximum efficiency.
The then Minister of National Development, Lawrence Wong, at the inauguration of the International Built Environment Week on September 4, 2019 (Photo: BCA).
But these units have the potential to be replaced by chillers that use water instead of harmful refrigerants and energy-intensive compressors.
The use of membranes and district cooling systems that save energy by pumping cold water from a centralized plant to multiple buildings can be implemented and expanded.
New refrigeration technologies using hybrid solar thermal air conditioners that can reduce electrical loads by 55%, developed by NUS Mechanical Engineering and Ecoline Solar, are also being installed in commercial locations in Singapore.
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EVERYONE HAS A PART TO PLAY
We are already feeling the effects of climate change and we are experiencing higher temperatures and higher humidity than ever before. However, the irony is that turning on the air conditioning traps our world into global warming.
It is critical that Singapore moves away from unsustainable air conditioning to mitigate its carbon footprint.
Until the day we can use alternative forms of energy on a larger scale or electrify entire fleets of public transportation buses, turning on the air conditioning will have a huge impact on our environment.
For our part, the only way to limit damage is to use energy-efficient air conditioners and keep their use to a minimum.
Kavickumar Muruganathan is a supply chain and sustainability professional in the renewable energy sector. He is also a professor at TUM Asia.
