air condition units

piraka

I read recently that the automotive industry in Europe are going to replace the refrigerant in air condition units with CO2 because the current refrigerant HFC-134a has a global warming potential of 1300 times more powerful than CO2.( One wonders how much of this gas has escaped into the atmosphere over the years.)

The change is being carried as part of the Kyoto agreement.

Because the US is not a signatory they will not have to comply.

Why don’t they just get rid of the air condition units?

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/cen/84/i36/toc/toc_i36.html

bonkey

piraka wrote:

Why don’t they just get rid of the air condition units?

Because the weather across continental Europe differs somewhat from that in Ireland?

While an Irish person may have little difficulty driving the length or breadth of the nation in high summer with no air-con, its a completely different ballgame when you try the same in (say) any of the Mediterranean nations.

Summer of 2003, we could drive with the roof down, in over 25 degrees after midnight on a lot of days. Daytime temps were almost constantly over 30 degrees from May through to September. That was in Switzerland - which got off far more lightly than Spain, Italy, France, Greece, and others.

Sure, you can fall back on the "what did they do before air-con" argument, but the reailty is that by-and-large the only people who'll agree that aircon isn't needed are those who don't have it and/or who live in a country where its rarely a significant benefit over simple airflow.

<edit>
Arguably, driving our car with the roof down is even worse than using air-con, as the impact on fuel efficiency is, I believe, greater. Same applies for driving a car with the windows down - although typically to a lesser extent.

Open sunroof + open windows does generally result in worse efficiency than using air-con (from what I've seen). So which is really better? No aircon & more fuel emissions as a result? Or aircon & improved fuel efficiency? What is used in the aircon should be made as environmentally friendly as possible, sure, but the aircon itself isn't the monster its often made out to be when you consider the (realistic) alternatives.

</edit>.

piraka

A/C units are now becoming standard kit in most models of cars here in Ireland. The units really are a luxury. Again it comes down what are people willing to sacrifice in order to mitigate global warming.

The ole halocarbons, as well as destroying the ozone layer could well have being contributing to global warming over the years