An estimated $26.2 billion was spent on refrigeration and air conditioning (RAC) equipment and services in Australia during 2012, according to the Cold Hard Facts 2 (CHF2) report.
Released last week by the Federal Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, CHF2 provides an economic and technological assessment of the local RAC sector from 2007 to 2012.
It includes an analysis of the size and economic value of the industry, the equipment and refrigerant gas bank, trends in gas imports and equipment, and direct and indirect emissions in the sector and expands on the original CHF report released in 2007.
Contributing to this total was $5.9 billion spent on purchasing and installing new equipment while $533 million (at 2013 prices) was spent on refrigerant gas.
The report found there are around 173,000 people employed in more than 20,000 businesses operating in the RAC sector.
Those employees are earning approximately $13.3 billion in wages and salaries per annum.
There are more than 45 million individual pieces of RAC eqipment operating in Australia that consumed more than 59,000 GWh of electricity in 2012, equivalent to more than 22 per cent of all electricity used in Australia last year.
Owners of RAC equipment spent an estimated $14 billion dollars to pay for that electricity.
This vast stock of equipment, from small portable refrigerators and air conditioners to enormous commercial chillers and refrigeration plants, employ a bank of more than 43,000 tonnes of synthetic refrigerant gases, valued at around $5.8 billion.
More than 4,800 tonnes of low GWP refrigerants are also in use.
Due to the huge quantity of electricity used, and the significant bank of high GWP refrigerant gases used, RAC equipment is one of the largest single sources of greenhouse emissions in Australia - about 11.1 per cent of Australian emissions in 2011.
The report said the most obvious responsibility of the industry is the transport of nearly $30 billion worth of perishable food per annum from farm to domestic refrigerator, using more than 28,000 refrigerated trucks.
It also supports millions of workers in more than 140 million square metres of non-residential buildings.
Air conditioning is installed in the majority of the country’s estimated eight million homes as well as 16 million registered motor vehicles.
The CHF2 report said it is difficult to unequivocally declare how much RAC services contribute to Australia’s $1.57 trillion economy, but total spending is equivalent to 1.7 per cent of Australia’s GDP.
The report explains why this data is so important.
“The provision of RAC is clearly a major enterprise by any measure; yet the Australian public has little knowledge of this industry and does not relate in any meaningful way,” the report said.
“This invisible role of RAC in the economy means that it has not fared well in the collection of economic data by government even by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.”
Authors of the report Expert Group managing director Peter Brodribb and Thinkwell Australia managing director Michael McCann will present a detailed examination of the report at the CCN Live Conference next Thursday, August 8, 2013.