The ‘Cold Economy’

A talk given to an IET audience earlier this month by Dr. Tim Fox, Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor.

Brief notes follow, starting with some overall statistics, moving on to specific problems with suggested solutions, and ending with relevant institutions and links to further reading.

Statistics: refrigeration uses around 17% of global electricity supply at present. Cooling equipment deployed globally is expected to to grow from 3.6bn units in 2018 to 9.5bn by 2050. The associated energy consumption would grow from 3,900 TWh/yr to 9,500 Twh/yr, and the total CO2e emissions for sector from ≈4GT to ≈8.9GT. Global space cooling is expected to consume more energy than global space heating by 2070 and 60% more by the end of the century.

Some specific examples:

Built Environment
Use of Natural Resources 

60,000m3 of stored winter snow from road clearing has been used to cool Sundsvall Hospital, Sweden.
District Cooling (DC) can improve efficiency 5-10 times relative to alternative space cooling provision through conventional stand-alone air conditioning units. DC can also use local, natural energy resources, such as sea water, thereby saving electricity for other applications and reducing demand on urban power grids. 
Ice Bear is an ice-based electricity storage system which charges at night on off-peak power and provides up to 6 hours operation by day. It can reduce electricity load by 95% during operation. https://www.ice-energy.com/

Food Supply

A typical transport refrigeration unit (TRU) consumes a substantial fraction of the vehicle’s fuel, produces substantial amounts of NOx and CO2 and leaks HFC refrigerants.

Solutions include:
Battery-electric and eutectic plates that store cold in salt solution; electric TRUs powered by hydrogen fuel cells

Data Centres:

There are currently 8 million data centres globally and the number is growing rapidly. They use 3% of global electricity consumption and account for 1.24 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum. Up to 50% of the power demand is for cooling.

Solution:
Use the waste heat from cooling
Heat from cooling data centres is used to supply district heating systems in Stockholm, and Data Parks sites aim to encourage heat recovery. Recovery from a 10MW data centre can heat 20,000 apartments/flats. 

UK Centres of research on thermal and cooling issues:
University of Birmingham & Centre for Cryogenic Energy Storage.
Thermal Energy Research Accelerator (T-ERA) Universities of Aston, Birmingham, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham and Warwick and the BGS.
CryoHub: to investigate integrating cryogenic energy storage with refrigerated warehouses and food processing plants.
i-STUTE: an interdisciplinary centre for Storage, Transformation and Upgrading of Thermal Energy.
National Centre for Sustainable Energy use in Food chains (CSEF): research into energy, resource use and sustainability of the food chain. 

Links to publications:
Chilling Prospects: Providing Sustainable Cooling For All
(Sustainable Energy For All)
https://www.seforall.org/sites/default/files/SEforALL_CoolingForAll-Report.pdf

The Future of Cooling: Opportunities for energy-efficient air conditioning
(International Energy Agency)
https://www.iea.org/cooling/

A Cool World: defining the energy conundrum of cooling for all
(University of Birmingham)
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-eps/energy/Publications/2018-clean-cold-report.pdf

Policy Commission Report: Doing Cold Smarter
(University of Birmingham)
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/energy/policy/cold/policy-commission-launch.aspx

A Tank of Cold: Cleantech Leapfrog to a More Food Secure World
(Institution of Mechanical Engineers)
http://www.imeche.org/policy-and-press/reports/detail/a-tank-of-cold-cleantech-leapfrog-to-a-more-food-secure-world


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