Impact of New Efficiency Standards on Air Conditioning in China

The rapid increase in global demand for air conditioners has deleterious effects on the fight to stop global warming. In 2017, worldwide ownership of ACs soared by more than 30%, most of which occurred in developing countries. The demand for ACs is likely to continue increasing in the future due to rising per-capita incomes and the expansion of electrification. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that the global energy demand due to ACs will more than triple by 2050, which will almost double CO₂ emissions from the electricity used for air cooling compared to 2016. In order to regulate cooling-related energy consumption and its contribution to global CO₂ emissions, appropriate policy responses in countries like China are critical.

China is the largest consumer of ACs and it produced 70% of the world’s room ACs in 2017. The country’s cooling demand is anticipated to keep increasing. For instance, the projection by the IEA shows that the energy use for space cooling in China by 2050 will more than double when compared to 2016. Chinese authorities adopted mandatory minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) for household appliances and business equipment, including room ACs, in the late 1980s. Even as the MEPS on ACs (measured by cooling capacity over power consumption) were revised several times in the past, some of the existing MEPS are not up to date for ACs with higher energy efficiency. Regulation is also lax for the present products. In June 2019, Chinese authorities released revised MEPS as part of their Green and High-Efficiency Cooling Action Plan to improve energy efficiency of major cooling products by at least 30% by 2022. The latest revision implemented in July 2020 plans the phased rise of standards from 2020 to 2022.

A recently published paper by Nihan et al. (2020) indicates that China’s new minimum energy performance standards on air conditioners would yield benefits in terms of CO₂ emissions reductions and lower household expenditure on energy. The authors calculated the CO₂ emissions from room ACs after revision of MEPS and compared it to that of the baseline scenario before the revision. They also forecasted the net savings of Chinese household expenditures under the new MEPS relative to the baseline, taking into account both the price increase of new room ACs and electricity bill savings through improvement of energy efficiency.

Their results show that compared with the baseline scenario, the revised MEPS cumulatively reduce CO₂ emissions by 12.8% between 2019 and 2050 and bring a total net savings of ¥2.62 trillion—about $400 billion—to Chinese households during the same period. The study also shows the advantages of setting possibly higher MEPS. The researchers estimated CO₂ emissions and electricity consumption from room ACs under two alternative scenarios in which the authorities raise the minimum standard by 2022 more aggressively than the latest MEPS. The results show that in both higher-MEPS scenarios, annual CO₂ emissions and electricity consumption in 2050 decreased by 15% to 53% compared to the recently revised MEPS.

This paper also suggests that China can further reduce CO₂ emissions and save on energy by revising the MEPS beyond 2022. It calculated the CO₂ emission and electricity consumption under one possible scenario in which MEPS are raised once more in 2025. According to the authors, relative to the proposed MEPS, accumulated reduction of CO₂ emissions and electricity consumption between 2019 and 2050 will more than double.

If raising MEPS on ACs could decrease the electricity consumption as calculated in the paper, then the policy might contribute significantly towards carbon emission reductions in China. In September 2020, the president of China, Xi Jinping, announced that China will peak its CO₂ emission before 2030 and realize carbon neutrality before 2060. Setting aggressive MEPS for ACs will help China achieve these national targets. Moreover, since China is the largest producer of room ACs and exports to countries with soaring space-cooling demand such as Southeast Asia, more energy-efficient ACs manufactured under higher MEPS in China could also aid these areas in suppressing CO₂ emissions.

---

Karali, Nihan, Nihar Shah, Won Young Park, Nina Khanna, Chao Ding, Jiang Lin, and Nan Zhou. 2020. “Improving the energy efficiency of room air conditioners in China: Costs and benefits.” Applied Energy 258 (January). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.114023.