Guideline for life cycle climate performance
Climate change is an increasingly important global concern with far reaching effects. The heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration (HVAC&R) industry is allotting a significant amount of effort to reduce the environmental impacts of HVAC&R systems. Discussions about the climate impact is often limited to the GWP of the fluids used, but this is far too restrictive, as it does not take into account the real emissions of fluids, and ignores indirect emissions, especially those related to energy use over the life time of the equipment.
This guide provides a harmonized method to calculate the LCCP (Life Cycle Climate Performance) for all types of stationary air conditioning, heat pumping and refrigeration systems. The process and assumptions by which LCCP should be approached are discussed in later chapters. This guide aims to provide designers, facility operators, manufacturers, and policy makers a way to effectively evaluate and compare the environmental impact of different systems over the course of their lifetimes. A sample calculation and excel tool are included for a residential heat pump.