Saziye Dickson; Research Manager of VAC&R, went on to look at the global AC market and presented insights into BSRIA’s latest report on US Indoor Air Quality, which will be followed by a European study later this year. The focus on IAQ following the pandemic has meant 25-35% growth rates are expected from 2020-2025 for IAQ controls, MERV 13+ and UV-C solutions.
The air conditioning market is expected to see a double-digit growth rate of between 16-17% by value in 2021 globally for most of the key residential products, apart from windows and moveables, which was just 3%. In the commercial segment, which of course was hit by changes in the way we worked and shopped during the pandemic, the picture was more of a mixed bag and heavily influenced by the major markets; the US and China. Hence the rooftop market in the US saw good growth of 25% whereas maxi VRF growth was at a much lower level than mini-VRF at just 8% vs 16% due to the impact on retail, offices, hotel, and leisure. Chiller markets also saw double digit growth.
Saziye then reviewed the growth between 2018-2021 for each of the key regions. For the Americas the trend is dominated by the US, which faired well and was stimulated by Federal Government stimulus packages with focus on IAQ and energy efficiency, recording a 19% growth in 2021 in the light commercial sector, and 8-9% in the residential and commercial sectors.
In Asia, China moved to more normal market conditions earlier than the rest of the region and although growth rates are not what we have seen in the past; 2021 saw a recovery which meant that the region reached pre-pandemic regions in 202, with growth rates of 7-9%. The highest growth was in the residential sector driven by replacement, home working and a drive to high efficiency units.
In EMEA the commercial markets are taking longer to recover and not expected to reach pre-pandemic levels until 2023.However, the residential and light commercial markets recovered well in 2021 with growth of 14% and 17% respectively as replacement is pushing sales and the demand from Northern Europe and markets with a lower residential penetration have been rising.
The increasing demand for energy efficiency means that the penetration of inverters in splits has now reached 82% in Europe and 76% in Asia Pacific for splits but still remains relatively low at 30% in the Americas. Chiller penetration of inverters is lower at 40% in Europe. In terms of heat pumps; the trend is towards installing heat pumps as a bivalent system. Whereas heat pumps were previously widely mainly adopted in scroll chillers; they are now being adopted in larger screw and centrifugal chillers with the highest penetration in Asia Pacific with 70%, 40% in Europe but just 5% in the Americas.
R32 is now widely used in single splits and by 2025 85% of units are expected to be supplied with R32 in Europe. The progress will be much slower in the Americas where R410 will continue to dominate with R32 estimated to account for just 20% by 2025.However, there are also moves towards R290, as R32 is not viewed as a long-term solution and this refrigerant is increasingly favoured by the Chinese manufacturers. For chillers it is more of a mixed picture with scroll chillers moving away from R410A to R32, R134A and R513A expected to combined account for a third of scroll chillers in the Americas by 2025. For screw and centrifugal chillers the move away from R134A will reflect more of a mixed picture in terms of refrigerants, but there is a clear move to R1234ze and zd.
The presentation was wrapped up by presented the increasing move from HVAC suppliers to set up regional production points in order to ease material and logistical problems; a trend that was already happening, but has been reinforced by the mismatch in supply and demand during the pandemic.