PATHWAYS TO IMPROVE THE ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF RESIDENTIAL AIR-CONDITIONING SYSTEMS IN SAUDI ARABIA

The residential sector in Saudi Arabia consumes more than half of the total electricity generated, with room air conditioners being among the most significant contributors. The current work aims to estimate the current and future energy savings and CO2 emission reductions possible under three different scenarios: Business as Usual (BAU), Continuous Improvement Scenario (CIS), and Accelerated Improvement Scenario (AIS) up to 2030. The BAU scenario presents the energy consumption and CO2 emissions assuming the current Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER) of 11.8 BTU/Wh is maintained till 2030. CIS takes into account an improvement of 5% in EER of new air conditioner (AC) stock every 2 or 5 years, and AIS considers an improvement of 10% in EER of new ACs every 2 or 5 years. Additionally, the energy savings and CO2 emission reductions possible through varying penetration levels of newly introduced refrigerant (R32) have been estimated for all three scenarios with 2 year intervals. The BAU scenario is promising resulting in energy savings of up to 21.4 TWh in 2030 compared to 2020 energy consumption figures. However, implementing AIS with 2 year intervention intervals leads to significant additional energy savings of 12.7 TWh by 2030 as compared to BAU scenario. Even implementing CIS with 2 year intervention intervals leads to additional energy savings exceeding 3 TWh by 2030. The introduction of the new refrigerant (R32) leads to modest cumulative energy savings of 2.5 TWh in the best-case scenario and suggests that the policy focus can be directed towards increasing the EER of residential AC systems.