Assessment of Final Space Cooling Consumption in the European Transportation Sector

Giulio Quaglini,Andrea Grotto,Eric Wilczynski,Simon Pezzutto

doi:10.3390/su14031491

Giulio Quaglini, Andrea Grotto + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031491

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Abstract

The current study aims to investigate one of the most underexplored energy fields in scientific research, i.e., final energy consumption (FEC) of space cooling (SC) in the European (EU27+UK) transportation sector with 2019 as a baseline. The fundamentals of this study include a comprehensive literature review as well as the creation of a dataset characterized by completeness and reliability. Different essential input parameters have been investigated and the encountered data and information gaps have been filled. The transportation sector has been broken down into three main categories, namely, light, medium, and heavy vehicles. Throughout the EU27+UK, the number of vehicles, equivalent full load hours (EFLHs), system power capacities, and their related energy efficiency levels have been collected. The collected data and information have been computed and the EU27+UK FEC for space cooling in the transportation sector resulted in more than 125 TWh/year. It is worth underlining that the light vehicles category accounted for the majority of the total FEC, followed by the medium and heavy vehicle categories, respectively.

Highlights

It has been decades since the European Union (EU) focused its efforts on achieving ambitious climate and energy goals
It is important to state that, in the present work, the EU27+UK stock of vehicles has been divided into transport categories since different types of cooling equipment are present in different types of vehicles
According to the main findings of the current study, in 2019, the final energy consumption (FEC) for space cooling (SC) in the transportation sector for the whole EU27+UK accounted for almost 125 TWh/y

Summary

Introduction

It has been decades since the European Union (EU) focused its efforts on achieving ambitious climate and energy goals. Improvement in energy efficiency as well as a 20% increase in the share of renewable energy sources (RES) and a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared with 1990 levels by the year 2020. Significant support to achieve the above-mentioned goals came from the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), set in 2002 and revisited in 2018 when it became the revised Energy. Efficiency Directive (EED II), with an increase in energy efficiency improvements from 20 to 32.5% [1,2,3]. According to the above-mentioned acts, EU scientific experts noticed that, in 2018, GHG emissions reduced by 23% from 1990 levels and that the implementation of the EDD In 2018, the EU’s GHG emissions were targeted to be reduced by 55% until 2030 in addition to plans for Europe to be the first continent to achieve a net-zero target by 2050 [3].

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