Post-GEF Era: Joint Efforts Have to Be Made

“GEF‘Promoting Energy Effective Room Air conditioners (PEERAC)’tells a Chinese story. We hope that we can tell a good story and do more based on that” said Liu Yuan from the Division of Evaluation and International Consultancy of Foreign Economic Cooperation Office, Ministry of Environmental Protection in an interview with our correspondent.

Why Would PEERAC Come Into Being?

Starting to prepare in 1995, PEERAC was implemented between 1999 and 2006, raising the energy efficiency of Chinese residential refrigerator by 28.7%. More than 90% of the products met the EEI Level1 and Level2, making great technical progress in the whole residential refrigerator industry and acquiring the technical and research capability that promoted the sustainable development of the industry. This project was also appraised as “one of the most successful projects of GEF” by GEF’s chief executive officer Monique Barbut.

“On this basis and according to some of our prior knowledge, we believe that compared to refrigerators, air conditioners would bring more benefits, because there is more room for energy saving when electricity consumption is quite heavy”, said Liu Yuan.

For this purpose, Foreign Economic Cooperation Office, Ministry of Environmental Protection jointly developed PEERAC with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which was authorized by GEF in January 2010 and received grants of 7 million dollars.

Multi-participation: The Mandatory Field for the Sustainable Development of the Project

According to Liu Yuan, “Technology-driven” aims at gradually promoting the research and development, design and production capability of the compressor and room air conditioner manufacturing enterprises. “Market-fueled” activities, is to cooperate with the enterprises to advertise for energy effective products, eliminating the obstacles of energy effective room air conditioners in the market by raising the energy saving awareness of the public, thus greatly improves the sales volume of energy effective room air conditioners.

In addition, the project also focuses on “policy guidance” and “public participation”. Namely, through the efforts of the government, the project encourages enterprises to produce more energy effective products, helps consumers to form a good understanding of energy effective products and makes them feel willing to buy and use energy effective air conditioners.

“Solely relying on the guidance of the government is not enough, and we need more enterprises to participate in this project,” said Liu Yuan. Therefore, 15 manufacturing enterprises of room air conditioners and 10 enterprises of air conditioner compressor were invited to participate. Activities such as enterprises dialogue meeting and project training were also held to achieve progress through communication. The participation of the enterprises input more “energy” to PEERAC.

What Did GEF Air Conditioner Encounter?

“At the beginning, we planned to improve EEI from the 2007 level by 10%. However, in June 2010, new standard was released by the nation which led to a stricter EEI level of air conditioners. Keeping the original plan of improving the EEI level by 10% meant we didn’t need to do anything, because we had already accomplished our goal. Yet we needed to be responsible for the project, so we increased the level to 25%. However, during this period, RMB appreciated which meant that we needed to deal with the fluctuation of the fund amount and the growing workload. It was a great challenge to the whole project,” said Liu Yuan.

Facing various difficulties, all participating enterprises rose to the challenge, achieving surprising results. According to the introduction, many enterprises completed or exceeded the targets by the end of the project.

Take Gree as an example. During the implementation of the project, Gree completed the research and development of 71 types of new energy effective room air conditioners. The weighted average EER of invariable frequency products was 3.51, 31.46% higher than the baseline level (2.67) of the project (2007). The weighted average SEER of inverter products was 4.49, 49.67% higher than the baseline level (3.0). The total energy saving amount was about 33.25 billion kWh.

What Did GEF Air Conditioners Bring?

PEERAC not only helped enterprises to improve their technology, but also, through the cohesion of the project, made them more competitive and capable of going global,” said Liu Yuan to the correspondent.

Responsible Competitiveness. Liu Yuan believed that PEERAC could promote benign competition among enterprises, thus set a good example for other industries. “This kind of cooperation and competition mode can help enterprises obtain better economic, social and environmental benefits while performing their social responsibilities. It exerts positive influence on the green development of air conditioning industry.”

International Influence. PEERAC played an important role in promoting the development of the enterprises, industry and green economy. What’s more, the influence it has exerted on the international arena was also admiring. Liu Yuan said that through this project, we showed to the international community the steady progress made by Chinese air conditioning enterprises.

Product Promotion Ability. In addition, implementing PEERAC in one country is not enough. international influence is more important. Chinese products being used in other countries is also a manifestation of its international influence. Therefore, in terms of global energy saving and carbon dioxide emission reduction, PEERAC contributes to the world, helping Chinese enterprises to go global.

Speaking of PEERAC’s future, Liu Yuan said, “The closing of a project doesn’t mean the end of it. For those enterprises that participated in this project, we hope that they can enter into the post-GEF era, using the technology obtained from this project to develop more advanced, energy effective products and tell more exciting stories.”