Industry-Related Greenhouse Gas Emissions are Higher Than Any Other Sector.

RESIDENTIAL HOME

In a Colorado home, for much of the year, there is enough solar energy beaming down on the roof to heat all of the home’s hot water as well as the radiant floor.

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HOSPITALITY

Restaurants like Buffet@Asia, a solar water heating system can help offset energy usage with an abundant renewable resource and can amount to significant cost savings.

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AIR CONDITIONERS

R-32 is 40% more efficient than R-410A, but with only 1/3 of the global warming potential.  Becuase less refrigerant is needed, increasing the life of the air conditioner.

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Greenhouse Gas

Over half (52 %) of global direct GHG emissions from industry and waste/wastewater are from the ASIA region, followed by OECD-1990 (25 %), EIT (9.4 %), MAF (7.6 %), and LAM (5.7 %).

Mining

Concerning extractive industries for metallic minerals, from 2005 to 2012 annual mining production of iron ore, gold, silver, and copper increased by 10 %, 1 %, 2 %, and 2 % respectively.

CO2 emissions

Manufacturing is responsible for about 98 % of total direct CO2 emissions from the industrial sector.

Eneref HVACR Initiative

Here’s how people responded to sustainable heating & cooling solutions.

There’s one thing that you don’t want, it’s aggravation and unhappy customers, so you want to sell them a good product. That’s a good product.

Howard Blady - Owner > View Eneref Report

I know about the filters because I’m friends with the custodian, but I don’t know if everyone else knows. It would make them feel like I feel—a little bit safer.

Ieisha Borden - Secretary > View Eneref Report

We should all have inverter-driven variable speed technology systems because we’d save energy and operating cost, be more comfortable, and reduce our carbon footprint. There’s really no downside.

Bill Goetzler - Navigant Managing Director > View Eneref Report

The school facilities division is implementing a strategic approach to help maintain the health and safety of all building occupants.

John Shea - Chief Executive Officer > View Eneref Report

What I can tell you is that walking into every one of those dorm rooms, the cooling and ventilation worked really well.

Joe Klein - Project Manager, Reeves Young > View Eneref Report

Most PTACs and VTACs can control temperature, but any humidity control is subsequent, or ancillary, to the temperature control. The Friedrich VRP unit specifically cools and addresses room humidity.

Rick Frey - Senior Director, Engineering Hilton Hotels > View Eneref Report

Industry

Industrial activities create all the physical products (e. g., cars, agricultural equipment, fertilizers, textiles, etc.) whose use delivers the final services that satisfy current human needs. An absolute reduction in emissions from the industry sector will require deployment of a broad set of mitigation options beyond energy efficiency measures (medium evidence, high agreement). In the last two to three decades there has been continued improvement in energy and process efficiency in industry, driven by the relatively high share of energy costs. In addition to energy efficiency, other strategies such as emissions efficiency (including e. g., fuel and feedstock switching, carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS)), material use efficiency (e. g., less scrap, new product design), recycling and re-use of materials and products, product service efficiency (e. g., car sharing, maintaining buildings for longer, longer life for products), or demand reductions (e. g., less mobility services, less product demand) are required in parallel.

Another important change in the world´s industrial output over the last decades has been the rise in the proportion of international trade. Manufactured products are not only traded, but the production process is increasingly broken down into tasks that are themselves outsourced and/or traded; i. e., production is becoming less vertically integrated. In addition to other drivers such as population growth, urbanization, and income increase, the rise in the proportion of trade has been driving production increase for certain countries. [Source]

Recycling

The most effective option for mitigation in waste management is waste reduction, followed by re-use and recycling and energy recovery. Opportunities to improve heat management include better heat exchange between hot and cold gases and fluids, improved insulation, capture and use of heat in hot products, and use of exhaust heat for electricity generation or as an input to lower temperature processes. Recycling can also help to reduce energy demand, as it can be a strategy to create material with less energy. Recycling is already widely applied for bulk metals (steel, aluminum, and copper in particular), paper, and glass and leads to an energy saving when producing new material from old avoids the need for further energy intensive chemical reactions. Plastics recycling rates in Europe are currently around 25 % (Plastics Europe, 2012) due to the wide variety of compositions in common use in small products, and glass recycling saves little energy as the reaction energy is small compared to that needed for melting. In 2008, 42 % of industrial energy supply was from coal and oil, 20 % from gas, and the remainder from electricity and direct use of renewable energy sources. These shares are forecast to change to 30 % and 24 % respectively by 2035. The reuse of materials recovered from urban infrastructures can reduce the demand for primary products (e. g., ore) and thus contribute to climate change mitigation in extractive industries. [Source]

  1. 39% of CO2 comes from U.S. buildings.

    The commercial and residential building sector accounts for 39% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States per year, more than any other sector. U.S. buildings alone are responsible for more CO2 emissions annually than those of any other country except China. Most of these emissions come from the combustion of fossil fuels to provide heating, cooling and lighting, and to power appliances and electrical equipment.

  2. $61 billion in annual energy savings from solar heating and cooling systems

    Implementing the solar heating and cooling systems (SHC) road map would create more than 50,000 good-paying American jobs across the US, and there would be an estimated $61 billion in annual energy savings for homeowners, businesses, schools, and governments. This dramatic expansion of SHC systems will permit America to generate approximately 8% of its total heating and cooling needs through clean solar energy, displacing an estimated 226 million tons of carbon emissions annually. That’s the equivalent of mothballing 64 coal plants.

    As the world population continues to grow and the limited amount of fossil fuels begin to diminish. Solar heating and cooling systems (SHC) draws from an inexhaustible energy source while displacing fossil fuels and electricity otherwise needed for heating and cooling. This reduces emissions of CO2 and air pollutants while stimulating local job and economic growth.

  3. US buildings use 36% of total energy

    Cooling a building can be expensive. In addition to cost, it places extra strain on the power grid—and our natural resources. In the U.S., buildings account for 36 percent of total energy use and 65 percent of electricity consumption, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). To offer relief from the heat, sustainable cooling and heating systems have been introduced. These units offer a smaller, quieter and more energy-efficient solution in comparison to the forced air systems prevalent in many buildings.

  4. Efficient refrigerants can reduce global warming

    The refrigerant R-32 is 40% more efficient than R-410A, but with only 1/3 of the global warming potential. If all R-410A currently in window air conditioners were replaced by R-32, the total CO2 equivalent impact would be reduced by 24%. Read Eneref Institute report.

Solar Thermal Heating in a Nevada Group Residential Home

“I was totally shocked at the size of the rebate. But I was happy for it. It really made the payback pretty decent.” — Gary Wood, a non-trustee volunteer officer of Green Chips.

FAQ: What's the right refrigerant for window air conditioners?

Chemical refrigerants, which transfer heat in cooling systems, such as air conditioners, must balance four key factors: efficiency, greenhouse gas mitigation, flammability and toxicity.

These factors inextricably work together; increasing one of them necessarily means effecting another. For example, to create a more efficient refrigerant, you must either make it flammable or contribute to global warming. The best chemical refrigerant is the one that optimizes the balance of these four factors—and the best refrigerant at this time is R-32.

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