Forecasting future cooling demand in London

Cooling of buildings in the UK is responsible for around 15 TWh per year of energy demand, largely powered by electricity with highly related CO2 emissions. The Greater London Authority wished to understand the potential impact of London's growing need for cooling on UK CO2 emissions in the period up to 2030. This paper describes a model developed to analyse the cooling requirements for London's key building stock and assess how these would be affected by change in system mix, improvements in system efficiencies, and by varying degrees of climate change.The analysis showed that, if left unchecked, the growth in active cooling systems in London could lead to a doubling of CO2 emissions from this source by 2030. This growth will be due to increase in building stock, increase in market share of cooling systems, and climate change. The last of these is difficult to predict, but by itself could add 260,000–360,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2030. This increase can be strongly mitigated, or even offset, by improvements in system efficiency. The difference between no efficiency improvements, and an assumed 1–3% annual efficiency improvement is around 340,000 tonnes by 2030.