Carbon offsetting – friend or foe?

In 1978, Ronald Higgins in his book ‘The Seventh Enemy: The Human Factor in the Global Crisis’ outlined the six major threats he saw facing the human race at that time. These ranged from environmental abuse to shortage of renewable resources. The seventh, and perhaps the deadliest he claimed, was apathy; our own inability to get off our backsides and do something about the problems facing us.

The ‘Seventh Enemy’ has now long been out of print and some thirty years later there is a real sense that we have moved on. Climate change issues are now openly discussed and are being tackled to some degree at both governmental and personal levels. In our industry, investment continues to be made in energy efficiency and it is encouraging that the need for training of staff and education of end-users are commonly debated topics.

The concept of carbon neutrality is probably at least a decade old but the interest by businesses in reducing and ultimately neutralising their carbon footprint has grown dramatically in the past couple of years. It is no longer just a few companies looking to improve their environmental credentials, there are also sound financial reasons for them to try and reduce their energy consumption given the instability of energy prices.

As the threats posed by climate change become more obvious, not only to scientists but also to the general public, the concept of being able to go ‘carbon neutral’ is an attractive one. Carbon neutrality offers individuals and companies the opportunity to take responsibility for the greenhouse emissions caused by their activities.

For users of refrigeration and air conditioning, it is natural that our industry should become a focal point and in response we continue to develop the tools and capabilities to rise to the challenges. We are in demand and our skills are an essential part of the solution. Or are they?

Before we get too carried away with a sense of our importance it would pay us to take a quick look over our shoulder at a new enemy lurking in the shadows. The sale of carbon neutral products and services is a rapidly growing market. Whilst the ACR industry gets caught up in arguing timetables for refrigerant phase-outs and training qualification start dates, the market for carbon neutrality is moving at a frightening pace; so fast in fact that an alternative ‘solution’ has been sought and found.

The new solution being considered by many is carbon offsetting. This solution offers individuals and companies a guilt free opportunity to consume as much as they want. Many companies, and particularly the ones that our industry deals with, have very little chance of easily becoming carbon neutral simply due to the nature of what they do. Therefore by acknowledging the damage they are causing and by paying to offset, they are seen to be doing something about it. Whether the motive is cynical or not, research has shown that being seen as green can be profitable.

The perceived advantages of carbon offsetting are so attractive to many that a multi-million pound industry has sprung up to service this requirement. A recent survey found that 73% of the British public would be willing to pay £5 of offset carbon emissions for a short-haul flight and £15 for long haul. It is only a matter of time before this willingness to pollute first and pay later reaches industrial users on a larger scale where the offsetting, and hence the figures involved are even greater.

However, when one looks closely at the carbon offset industry it is clear that these carbon experts do not agree on many things and that the carbon offset calculation itself is a guesstimate. Some experts even argue a very strong case that the whole concept of carbon offsetting fundamentally flawed and that it is impossible to state categorically that buying any carbon offset actually neutralises the damage made by greenhouse gas emissions.

The danger for the planet is that money spent on carbon offsetting is not being spent on reducing the damaging emissions in the first place. The danger for the ACR industry is that money could diverted away from projects that could genuinely reduce emissions. It may be cheaper to plant a few trees than to invest in new plant and for the ACR industry, herein lies the problem.

Is carbon offsetting a new enemy, albeit one with a smiling face? Time will tell.

Carbon is a cabaret, old chum.

“Money makes the world go around” sang Liza Minnelli in the musical ‘Cabaret’. Set in 1931 Berlin, a particularly dark and gloomy historical period with Germany polishing her guns in preparation for war, the story’s Kit Kat Klub is a decadent, seedy and immoral place where anything is for sale. Unperturbed by the growing unrest around them, the Kit Kat Klub-goers party on with raucous delight.

In 2008 London, the deepening low in the financial crisis inevitably prompted comparisons with the 1929 Wall Street crash, however the champagne parties that marked the end of the likes of Lehman Brothers had a more distinct ‘cabaret’ feel to them. The pattern of dishonesty and outright greed on the part of the financial institutions together with the staggering incompetence on the part of policy makers will make a great musical in a few years. As the FTSE-100 nosedived and British banks imploded, the Lehman Brothers PA system, known as the hoot, blared out the R.E.M. song as “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”; surely someone can choreography that into a great West-end finale?

Fun for the future perhaps, but rather depressing now, especial when one considers that similar models to these that are so spectacularly failing in the financial world form the basis of modern environmentalism. Cap and trade policies which involve putting limits on greenhouse-gas emissions and allowing companies to buy and sell the right to produce carbon is the equivalent of the sub-prime fiasco because at the end of the day no one will accept the high carbon prices that are required to make a significant dent in global warming.

Far from accepting that high fuel prices are a fair short-term trade for averting long term climate change, a little economic pain has been enough to quickly undo much of the good work done so far. The environmental movement may have made us care about global warming but they haven’t really made us willing to sacrifice anything financial tangible about it.

If the £37bn of taxpayers money to save the banks is seen as rewarding the irresponsible, what would you call the almost £7 million wasted every day by UK industry due to poor energy efficiency? This is not through lack of knowledge or awareness. As many as 80 per cent of all energy saving surveys that show significant energy savings are not being implemented even though they would produce very quick paybacks against any upfront investment. If greed fuelled the banking crisis, reticence, intransience, and let’s face it, incompetence by many energy wasting users will continue to pile on the pressure to the environment long after this current credit crisis is forgotten.

To help the money flow in the energy saving direction, the Carbon trust has announced it has doubled the maximum size of its interest-free Energy Efficiency Loans from £100,000 to £200,000 for small businesses. This will surely help those companies that are prepared to jump through the hoops to secure the loan and not worried about having them treated as ‘on balance sheet’ under statutory accounting rules and the resultant negative affect on certain key business indicators.

An alternative of funding energy saving projects is to rent the whole project from a leasing company. This allows net cost savings to be made right from the start and qualifies as an ‘operating lease’ and thus is accounted for ‘off balance sheet. For example, take a refrigeration project that can be shown to save electricity worth £30,000 a year but requires a capital investment of £60,000. The leasing company pays the £60,000 and rents the plant to the client over five years. The rental is £13,000 per annum which is more than covered by the energy saving of £30,000 per annum. So the project is cash rich from the start. Mary Poppins would perhaps see the £17,000 annual saving is the ‘spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down’; carbon reduction ‘in the most delightful way’.

Many organisations have trapped themselves into a dead-end by only considering payback periods of eighteen months or less. This is ‘cutting your nose off to spite your face’ when you consider that under some rental schemes, provided the project has a break even of four and a half years or less then the rental payments will be more than covered by the energy savings.

There is money available in the forms of loans and other financial schemes available to make significant energy reduction a possibility. Perhaps money really will 'help the world go around' after all.

Thermal Comfort versus energy efficiency – a dilemma

“Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin” so began ‘Listen with Mother’ every afternoon on the radio, just after lunch as I recall. With a full stomach and the prospect of stories, songs and nursery rhymes, I would sit and eagerly join over a million other under-fives for the fifteen minute programme in the comfortable environment of my family home.

Comfort then, as it is now, was far more than just room temperature. In fact there are several other factors (such as humidity, air movement and surface temperatures) which combine with personal factors (such as the clothing you are wearing and how physically active you are at that moment) to influence what is called your ‘thermal comfort’ in the home or workplace.

The term ‘thermal comfort’ is so important that it even has a definition in a British Standard (BS EN ISO 7730): ‘that condition of mind which expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment.’ More general definitions of comfort may include a sense of relaxation and freedom from worry or pain. It is therefore quite clear that thermal comfort is psychological and so in the workplace can affect staff morale and productivity. In extreme cases people may even refuse to work in the conditions.

Of course, there can never be an absolute standard for thermal comfort as humans live in a range from the tropics to high latitudes so it is hardly surprising that any definition, even if international agreed, is not easily convertible into physical parameters.

There are scientific methods used to measure thermal comfort and the ‘standard’ used in the UK for the assessment of comfort in an internal space (the CIBSE standard) is known as operative temperature with recommended summer and winter values being listed in CIBSE Guide A. This area of thermal comfort science is not without controversy however, with two different approaches (the heat-balance approach and the adaptive approach) dominating development.

The heat-balance approach

The heat-balance approach combines the theory of heat transfer with the human body’s own temperature regulation (which keeps the core temperature at about 37ºC) to establish a range of comfort temperatures which occupants will find comfortable. The range was determined by a ‘PMV’ (predicted mean vote) derived from studies of individuals in tightly controlled climate chambers. Based upon work by Fanger, the concept of PMV and ‘PPD’ (predicted percentage dissatisfied) have been internationally adopted and provide the narrow range of temperatures to which it is considered desirable for engineers to design air-conditioning and heating systems to achieve.

The adaptive approach

It has been argued that the heat-balance approach is limiting and by its very restrictive nature excludes the type of temperature control that could be obtained from opening windows for example. Whereas the adaptive approach, which is based upon field surveys of thermal comfort that demonstrate that people are actually more tolerant to temperature changes than the experiments used for the heat-balance approach suggest. It is thought therefore, that thermal comfort is experienced in a wider range of temperatures than previously predicted in the standards and that it is something that individuals achieve for themselves.

Adaptive variables are extremely important in ‘free running’ buildings (those buildings without heating or cooling systems) and BS EN ISO 7730 acknowledges that occupants who control their own environments (through opening windows, etc) will accept more severe conditions than those in controlled spaces.

Thermal comfort and energy efficiency

Balancing the need to provide thermal comfort on one hand and reduce energy consumption on the other is a dilemma faced by designers and operators.

It is well known that energy consumption of buildings can vary significantly depending upon the demands for the indoor environment. It is because of this relationship, that the indoor environment is mentioned several times in the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD).

Studies show that indoor comfort temperature depends on the outdoor air temperature together with business culture, such as the nature of the activities, the dress code of the occupants etc, and that conventional fixed temperature set point as a concept is not always appropriate. Here is an opportunity to put greater emphasis on energy saving with whilst still considering the comfort of occupants.

Incidentally, research into comfort levels of sedentary individuals at home reveals that simply being ‘at home’ in an environment that is familiar and under control, is conductive to comfort and makes people less sensitive to temperature. Whether this research included toddlers, sitting wide-eyed, listening to the radio isn’t known.

Energy efficiency: is the tail wagging the dog?

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”, so begins Charles Dickens’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, one of his very few historical novels with a plot that centres on the years leading up to the French Revolution. Circumstances today are very different of course and yet I have heard these same words used to describe the ACR industry’s predicament in today’s energy conscious, low carbon driven market.

There is little doubt that air conditioning and refrigeration systems consume an awful lot of energy. It has even been estimated that refrigeration systems could use as much as 15 percent of the total energy consumed world wide. For many end-users, their total energy cost is dominated by that consumed by ACR systems and with energy prices continuing to rise, it is hardly surprising that they are looking at energy saving schemes.

Energy efficiency is now widely regarded as not only making sound economic sense, but also as the most important first step in making a transition to a low carbon environmental policy. As a consequence, there is a general enthusiasm and interest shown by many end-users in improving energy efficiency and in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So, it would seem natural to assume that as the experts in the systems that are amongst the largest consumers of energy, the air conditioning and refrigeration sector, should be set to reap the benefits of its expert knowledge and be achieving unprecedented demand for its services. It is true that we are often the first port of call for enquires of this nature but all too often this turns out to be an initial picking of our brains for ideas and then an ‘energy assessor or consultant’ or called in to provide a report.

The growth in the number of energy assessors and energy consultants is staggering. It is rare to find an end user who has not had an energy audit carried out by one of this growing breed. There are also ‘low carbon consultants’ and the very soon to be, ‘air-conditioning inspectors’, to meet the air conditioning inspections requirement of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD).

For the ACR industry, this raises a number of important questions, for whilst there is a role for these energy professionals, surely the best advice will come from ACR contractors and designers who know how to reduce the energy consumption of the systems, backed by the specialist industry knowledge of the many suppliers who are now able to deliver energy efficient components? Is the ACR industry not best placed to be carrying out these audits and carrying out the often lucrative modifications? Many end-users think not, but why is that?

Integrated Approach

Perhaps the EPBD holds one key to the answer to these questions. It covers all aspects of energy efficiency in buildings in an attempt to establish an integrated approach to reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint. It is intended that this integrated approach will take account of aspects such as heating and cooling installations, lighting, the position of the building, heat recovery, etc. Here in lies perhaps one answer as to why ACR professionals can only form one part of the solution that clients are now looking for. Energy assessors look at the whole site energy consumption of which the ACR system is always only a part, even if it is a large chunk.

Opportunity

However, very few energy assessors are air conditioning and refrigeration experts and all too often, reports are written in very general terms and concentrate on other energy consuming items; lighting is always a popular area for them, even when the refrigeration systems on the site is the largest energy consumer. To have an energy saving initiative driven in this way feels like the tail wagging the dog.

However, there is a quiet revolution taking place led by companies such as The Integrated Energy Partnership who will support air conditioning and refrigeration contractors in preparing a comprehensive energy audit complete with a detailed report and proposal which covers all site services. This puts the ACR contractor back in the driving seat and able to offer their clients the benefit of their unique site knowledge and expertise.

Charles Dickens’ tale ends with one of the main characters losing their head by Guillotine, and whilst nothing quite so drastic awaits the ‘heads’ of ACR companies who fail to move with the times, the ‘best of times’ surely awaits those that offer the integrated energy approach.