There is a cooling conundrum facing the world. The need for air conditioning is rapidly increasing as temperatures rise, especially in the Global South. However, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which can be hundreds to thousands of times more potent than CO2, are used in the majority of cooling systems. Up to 24 Gt CO2e of HFCs and ozone-depleting chemicals (ODS) are thought to be present in equipment globally.
One of the quickest methods to reduce short-term heat is to stop these gases from leaving. But doing so costs money, and until now, reliable cost data has been hard to find.
The Lifecycle Refrigerant Management (LRM) Cost Explorer, a free interactive tool from Cascade Climate, calculates the costs of recovering refrigerant and subsequently reusing, reclaiming, or destroying it. Users can acquire a personalized estimate of upfront and continuing costs by entering their own operational parameters, such as equipment charge sizes, technician wages, transportation distances, and refrigerant prices.
The tool's default values are derived from a year of fieldwork that included trips to warehouses, training facilities, and destruction and reclamation sites in five Southeast Asian countries, as well as interviews with over a dozen participants in the refrigerant reverse supply chain. It currently covers residential air conditioning and commercial HVAC.
The largest expense is recovery. It accounts for more than 90% of the gross cost of default residential AC programs and is the biggest operational expense in every situation. The most important factors are refrigerant yield per unit and time per task. By the time a technician comes, many residential units are leaky and can only support 0.2-0.3 kg.
First are concentrated sources. Business equipment is typically the most economical place to increase capacity because one business HVAC system may store as much refrigerant as hundreds of home splits. High-capacity recovery equipment and take-back programs can close the gap for residential units.
New construction is inferior to existing infrastructure. It costs about USD 200,000 to retrofit a cement or rotary kiln for refrigerant destruction, compared to USD 3.5–5 million for a new facility. When recovery volumes are low, a new reclamation plant, which costs about USD 850,000, is largely idle.
The markets are still in their infancy. Destruction has no direct market value, and recovering gas is more expensive in many Article 5 nations than virgin refrigerant. Closing the gap can be aided by carbon finance, expanded producer responsibility, and increased HFC pricing as the Kigali phase-down tightens.
Equipment sitting dormant after pilot money ran out was one of the most startling observations made in the field. Three factors must cooperate to sustain LRM: revenue models that include operations rather than just equipment, long-term policies that allocate responsibilities and generate demand, and reliable monitoring, reporting, and verification.
Instead of providing a complete financial model, the Explorer provides high-level projections to aid with planning and prioritization. Users are urged to enter local data because Southeast Asia is reflected in the defaults. With the arrival of China and India in 2027, Cascade intends to increase sector coverage, permit alternative end-use paths, and add country analyzes.
Try the tool: https://cascadeclimate.org/our-work/refrigerant-management-and-transition/costs
Source: Cascade Climate, “LRM Costs: Explorer, Research, and Insights”
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