Five years ago the federal government announced a 10-year plan for Australia’s HVAC&R industry. Midway through the HVAC High Efficiency Systems Strategy (HESS), Sandra Van Dijk reviews the progress made to date.
Back in 2007, the HESS plan was launched amid much fanfare and expectation. It is an ambitious strategy which provides a long list of industry priorities requiring immediate attention.
Unfortunately, many of the priorities listed in the HESS plan are still in the early stages of development. This is partly due to carbon pricing which has redirected the government’s focus in the past 18 months.
Recognising that non-residential HVAC systems in Australia service around 120 million m2 of buildings and are part of an industry worth about $7 billion per annum and employs more than 95,000 people, the aim of the strategy is to improve energy performance.
If the objectives of HESS are achieved, it will deliver reductions in annual greenhouse emissions of four million tonnes and energy savings of around $350 million per annum.
In the HESS plan, initiatives are divided by practices, systems and people.
Each category has a list of priorities the government plans to implement in consultation with industry.
It identified codes of practice, national standards, a best practice guide for maintaining HVAC systems as well as uniform standards for installation, industry training programs including climate control apprenticeships, funding for public sector staffing programs and other initiatives that were all given timelines to be completed as part of the overall strategy.
To be fair ,the list of priorities is comprehensive. However, initiatives earmarked for completion in the first 18 months are still on the drawing board while other programs have been successfully implemented.
In an interview with CCN, a spokesperson for the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (DCEE) pointed to projects that are making a difference; for example, the Guide to Best Practice Maintenance and Operation of HVAC Systems for Energy Efficiency.
This detailed guide, which was released early last year, is almost 100 pages of information on how to get greater efficiencies from current HVAC systems and improve the performance ratings of buildings.
It is certainly a useful guide for anyone involved in managing, operating and maintaining HVAC systems to achieve sustainability goals set by the building owner.
A major initiative in the HESS plan is the Wireless Metering Report, which is a review of technology options for sub-metering and wireless data logging systems suitable for application to older HVAC systems.
“A key objective under the HVAC HESS was to identify suitable wireless metering technologies and establish demonstration projects to integrate retrofitted wireless metering to older HVAC systems within existing buildings,” the spokesperson said.
“The Wireless Metering Report provides the findings of the project and demonstrates the benefits of retrofitting wireless metering to an existing building, improving a building’s energy consumption, which allows for more targeted improvements to energy efficiency and optimisation of existing equipment.
To determine the direction of the second half of the strategy, the spokesperson said a prioritisation review was recently undertaken by the Energy Efficiency Working Group.
As a result of that review, the spokesperson said the current work program for HESS includes the development of a calculation tool.
“HVAC systems constitute the majority of building energy consumption and given that there isn’t a consistent metric for benchmarking and comparing system performance, this tool would be very valuable for industry,” the spokesperson said.
“The scope of this project includes the development of an online rating tool for rating systems in office buildings.
“Another initiative is the development of fact sheets to use as a reference to inform and educate.” The spokesperson said the next step to be taken under HESS is the development of a facilitation strategy.
“This project is to develop an effective strategy to encourage ongoing stakeholder engagement and ownership of the products and knowledge developed through HESS,” the spokesperson said.
“The strategy will investigate how best to integrate HESS products such as the Best Practice Guide and calculation tool into the sector so they become commonly used resources.
“We also plan to look at how electricity retailers can promote wireless metering within existing buildings.”
The installed base of non-residential HVAC systems in Australia consume nine per cent of electricity representing 3.6 per cent of greenhouse emissions.
