On September 30, Aquatherm Moscow, the largest international exhibition for HVAC/R and water supply equipment, successfully ran its first international online conference "European and Russian HVAC/R market: current state, prospects and ways to enter the Russian market".
The international online conference ran in English in a unique LIVE format for the first time of the Aquatherm Moscow history and united 5 international experts and 152 registered listeners from 31 countries.
Speakers of the online conference were world famous leaders and real professionals of the HVAC/R industry including:
Mr. Frank Hovorka opened the international online conference with its report about the state of the art technologies, general researches and market trends of the European HVAC/R industry. The REHVA president touched upon the latest EU initiatives in the HVAC/R sphere.
“The idea behind the European standardization is to go from products’ certification to system certification, to system approach in order to have a visualization”, Mr. Frank Hovorka explained.
Mr. Frank Hovorka also emphasized the fact that specialists from all over the world should cooperate with each other and exchange their innovations and developments in EPBD and this is one of the aims of REHVA association as such researches and collaboration will help translate technical data into financial tools, standardize data management, integrate data into business models and create new educational material and guidelines.
“We need to translate the technical information into financial models in the area of building. It is very important. We should take into account all the buildings’ impacts in terms of energy. We should translate all the technical data we have into reliability, incomes and risk mitigation for investors, “ Mr. Frank Hovorka said.
Mr. Georgy Litvinchuk presented the Russian VAC/R market to listeners and shared the official statistics and data from his own market research.
“Speaking about the domestic equipment we marked an increase in Russia. If we speak about room air conditioners, the increase was 10-12% this year. Room air conditioners with the capacity of 15 kilobits rose by 15% at once. The reason of such positive dynamic on the Russian VAC/R market is the necessity to replace old equipment which was installed a few years ago with new one. The number of such replacements increase by 15-20% a year,” – Mr. Georgy Litvinchuk said.
The Russian VAC/R expert also noted that the European enterprises had to produce VAC equipment longer than usual due to the pandemic and quarantine regime and this led to an increase of manufacturing of VAC equipment by the Russian companies.
Mr. Georgy Litvinchuk also emphasized the fact that COVID-19 caused a positive dynamic in the VAC/R sales in Russia this year. The demand for VAC equipment increased this year in Russia as there was a high need in ventilation and air conditioning equipment for hospitals and other organisations to cope with coronavirus.
Mr. Andreas Lucke considered ambitious goals of the UN green deal program stated in Agreement 2016 and UN new proposal 2020 and their technical implementation..
Agreement 2016 includes such objectives like:
UN new proposal in September 2020 provides reduction target of the greenhouse gas emissions from 40% to 55% by 2030.
“About 80% of boilers installed in Europe are functioning on gas. If you want to achieve the CO2 reduction goals than old boilers in the European stock have to be replaced as fast as possible because the efficiency of an old boiler is much lower than the efficiency of a new condensing boiler, for example. We have a labeling system in Germany. For example, a condensing boiler is an A boiler which has an efficiency of 95% (almost no losses), but the most part of boilers in Europe are C and D boilers which must be replaced in order to achieve the goals. Condensing technology is dominating now in Europe. In my opinion, it will be also a future technology in the Russian Federation because Russia is aiming at decreasing a CO2 emission, increasing efficiency and by that having more available gas for exports. We are in contact with the Russian government, they tell us it will be good to have a condensing technology in Russia,” – Mr. Andreas Lucke reported.
Mr. Andreas Lucke also presented such Technical solutions for solving climatic problems in Europe like Home Energy Management System (HEMS) and Fuel cell heating, and shared his professional opinion about the future of hydrogen (H2).
“I’m pretty sure the future of gas exports from Russia will not be only natural gas but also hydrogen will be transported”, - Mr. Andreas Lucke expressed his opinion.
Mr. Claus Haendel covered such important and very hot topic of the HVAC/R industry like EU regulation towards a sustainable building technology for ventilation and cooling.
“EU Regulation is working as we see a shift from 15% inefficient fans to lower than 10% inefficient fans which leads to saving about 45 GW of our electrical energy per a year and the capacity electrical power saved, roughly 2 power plants saved thanks to the fans regulation in Europe”, - Mr. Claus Haendel noted, answering the question if the EU regulation really works and does good for the industry or not.
“We have negative CO2 avoiding costs which means that we avoid CO2 and even gain money, we gain money back from the energy supplier. In the period of 5-15 years we have a negative CO2 avoiding costs at most of our projects so it is a kind of win-win situation for environment, customer and producer because producer may sell more efficient fans”, - the expert shared his opinion.
As Mr. Claus Haendel drew special attention of listeners to the fact that design outdoor temperature and typical operation hours lead to individual minimum requirement for heat recovery in the EPBD and Ecodesign spheres.
“An optimized heat recovery system depends on outdoor temperature and operation times. If we have high outer temperatures and low operation time, economically the efficient system is 50-55% and in cold climate with low operation time it goes up to nearly 80%. But 80% heat recovery systems is enough or even too much for the southern Russia but it is still too low for the northern Russia so we need to consider temperature,” – Mr. Claus Haendel stated.
Mr. Marco Buoni, AREA president presented his speech about the revision of Fgas Regulation and improving the Competencies:
“European Commission received 75 feedbacks as contribution from stakeholders and associations. Is is extremely important as Europe is the first, the leading continent reducing global F-gases and our air conditioning systems are part of it, for example, heat pump systems are responsible for 25% of energy consumption so we would like to increase trainings and improve competencies in this spheres.
As Mr. Marco Buoni marks the Fgas regulation is working but it should be improved. It is necessary to do more trainings, increase energy efficiency (not only GWP), ban illegal trade and so on:
“There are so much refrigerants illegally imported to Europe, they constituent about 1/3 part of all imported refrigerants in Europe, which is completely changing the scope of our regulation. We need to think about new alternative refrigerants of future”.
Aquatherm Moscow is also preparing the second international online conference focusing on the Asian and Russian VAC/R market in November.