Moving Towards a Climate Friendly Refrigeration

Let’s talk about what does it takes for India to move towards climate friendly refrigeration industry.

Refrigeration plays a vital role in our day-today life. We realise the importance only during the hot summer days, when the climate is piping hot during the summers. The recent pandemic took us through the role of cold chain and refrigeration across various industries, especially for the pharma and vaccination development storage and distribution through cold chain.

Refrigeration and sustainable cooling are the critical aspects in refrigeration. Let’s talk about what does it takes for India to move towards climate friendly refrigeration industry, and how are we willing to move ahead to this transformation. It falls within the broader umbrella of the natural refrigerants that we are looking at; and refrigeration industry has multiple facets to it. When you look at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that the world has to achieve, India has a very important place in achieving the SDG as most of them are directly related to the refrigeration industry and on how refrigeration industry will enable them.

The second aspect is food loss and nutrition deficit. When we say nutrition deficit, it is not just having food on the plate, but also having the right kind of mix in the food. What we see in India today is while people are having meals on their table, especially in the rural places, most of their food basket consists of rice or pulses and it doesn’t have the other aspects like greens, vegetables or fruits. And if that has to increase it needs to be available to these people in different parts of the country and refrigeration and cold chain is going to play a very important role. The third aspect on vaccines and pharma is something that needs no emphasis.

Now, when we have seen the importance of refrigeration industry and what the India cooling action plan puts in terms of the demand that is going to grow in the country. But what the extract talks about those two parameters even with the business as usual scenario of 2017-18 there is scope to reduce the refrigerant demand in the next 20 years by about 20 to 25 percent. While the cooling, the cold chain and the commercial refrigeration industry grows, you can still reduce the refrigeration industry and refrigerant demand by around 25 percent.

Natural refrigerants and low-charge ammonia systems are going be a key element in bring it to reality. How do you enable that kind of development parallels? While, the growth of the industry happens, you also see on, the left hand curve that is there that there is scope to reduce energy demand by 29 percent. And if this has to happen, you have to move towards energy efficient refrigerants and not just look at moving into moving the industry forward in terms of just looking at growth. Now, what are the things that could enable this and when we look at reference events in itself?

Today, we are in the fourth refrigerant transformation, and we have started moving with natural refrigerants in the 1830s where they were toxic, flammable, unsafe to use and the first transformation came in where we had CFCs which were followed by HCFCs both of these were depleting the ozone. So, you had the Montreal Protocol in place and you got the HFC refrigerants which have a lot of global warming potential; and again from 2015 onwards you are moving towards natural and low-GWP reference. So, as what we are seeing today in terms of a natural refrigerant and the low GWP refrigerant phase is the fourth refrigerant transformation. And what is important in this fourth refrigerant transformation is that these natural refrigerants which were toxic and flammable in the 1830’s continue to be the same. We have evolved as an industry and as the people and we understand how to use these refrigerants in a safe way. If the national refrigeration are going to play a very important role in this transformation in the next 10 to 20 years, then safety will be the main qualifying criteria on how we take this forward.

And regulatory framework certainty will drive the technology development. One thing that is certain is that we have to transition away from the HFCS and the high-GWP reference as they are different for different countries. The Kigali amendment came to India this decade only but the industry is already moving towards refrigerants and technology which is more sustainable and long term in nature.

But what are the three parameters that can enable the industry to move towards natural or low GWP refrigerants? Here, the refrigerant sustainability triangle comes into play. A refrigerant should be environmentally friendly, that is it should have a low-ozone depleting potential, low global warming potential and be good to the environment especially during any unexpected leaks there are leaks and aspects like the second aspect is on affordability. When we say affordability, it does it just does not mean that you have the refrigerant at a low cost. It is also important that we are moving to are the low GWP refrigerants, that we are moving to or as efficient or have a better efficiency than the current refrigerants. It should not happen that you move towards a refrigerant, which is having a low global warming potential. But you will lose out on efficiency. Because if you do that, you will still be contributing to climate change an indirect way by consuming a lot more energy. So it’s important from that angle as well.

And the third angle where safety is going to be the most critical parameter because the natural and Low GWP refrigerants are going to be flammable, mildly flammable or toxic in nature. So we need to have the right standards and the right skill sets in place to do this. So, how do we do this? And what we have seen is that there is a collaboration between industry, government and research institutes that needs to come together to develop the ecosystem that is needed for developing these natural or low GWP refrigerants. We are already seeing industry working with research institutes and governments in the space.

For example, Danfoss have just entered into an MOU with Indian Institute of Science. Where we are looking at developing CO2 as a refrigerant for India and it is just not sufficient that you have the technology available to deploy it in India, as it needs an entire ecosystem to support it. While you may have the products, you may have the heat exchangers, you may have the compressors that are needed. You will need the system integrators, the technicians who are comfortable in using natural refrigerants. And what we have seen working globally in multiple regions is that for natural refrigerants from a refrigeration industry point of view, these are in commercial refrigeration. And towards the industrial refrigeration, we are seeing a lot of development in the fishery industry, dairy food processing and other industries where ammonia is predominantly being used for industrial food processing.

We need to understand that safety shouldn’t be the only factor to move away from ammonia and shift towards a chemical base refrigerated; rather, we should look at low charge ammonia plants can take care of the efficiency as well as the climate. So these are some of the applications that the industries and Danfoss is looking at. And we already see a lot of interests from end users and government towards this development. And we believe that we will be able to take the shape in the next decade or so with a lot more pilots coming in and the industry getting ready.