The Best Business Opportunities in 2022 for the C&R Sector

Current and future projects are clearly marked by environmental protection, sustainability and resilience, says Javier Ara, member of the board of directors of AEDICI (Spanish Association of Engineering and Installation Consulting Engineers). “This is leading to the development of different areas, trends and actions, which are having a major impact on the concept, design, execution, maintenance and management of buildings.”

In his opinion, “the trend towards the decarbonising buildings, and distributed generation with renewable energies, electric vehicles (and the necessary infrastructure), green hydrogen (more in the medium term), near-zero consumption buildings, minimising the impact on water resources, and so on, are disrupting and renewing the ways we construct and maintain buildings.” And, this means that, “the areas, technologies and systems affected by all this are those that will have the greatest growth potential and, so, there’s a clear market opportunity now and in the coming years.”

So, this industry expert expects “that both renewable energy use (solar and environmental capture, land, water, hydrogen, and so on), and the design of buildings with very high energy efficiency equipment, with heat recovery systems, consumption monitoring and management with advanced data processing capabilities, are creating strong forecasts for the forthcoming air conditioning and refrigeration fairs.

Speeding Up the Ecological Transition

The current events are also shaping the way the sector is evolving and creating new opportunities. For example, surging refrigerant gas prices, up 30% to 60%, should encourage the refrigeration sector to speed up its ecological transition, according to AEFYT (Association of Refrigeration Companies & Technologies).

The association’s representatives explain that the price increases for basic chemical raw materials for manufacturing refrigerant gases, significantly higher shipping costs, a shortage of containers and high road transport costs are some of the factors in the perfect storm affecting the pricing and availability of HFC gases, essential for the operation of many refrigeration facilities.

In this context, AEFYT recommends its members accelerate measures to save and reuse refrigerant gases in a migration to solutions that increase energy efficiency. Promoting the regeneration of refrigerant gases so that the raw material in existing facilities are already used gases themselves, migrating to fluids with lower GWP to offset the extra cost of the Tax on Fluorinated Greenhouse Gases, and developing investment plans to minimise gas leaks and promote consumption savings through leak monitoring measures. These are some of the solutions that could help improve the situation, says the representative association of the refrigeration sector in Spain.

“The refrigeration sector, and industry as a whole, are going through a difficult situation. We have to make an effort to turn it into an opportunity, to move ahead decisively and more quickly in the ecological transition. It’s been underway for some time, but now, it can make the difference between staying in the market or not for many companies. And, it’s also a great opportunity to help refrigeration user-customers understand that we can be an ally in achieving their economic and energy targets,” says AEFYT President Susana Rodriguez.