With instruments and tools unfold out round them, a cluster of trainees watch as their teacher clambers up a ladder to reveal the set up of a brand new air conditioner.
Operating the gamut from fundamental security protocols to correct communication and coordination, the trainees are within the midst of a weeklong coaching program at Daikin’s latest gross sales firm and coaching heart within the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.
“There’s numerous potential in Southeast Asia, particularly in international locations like Cambodia,” mentioned Toshiyuki Tanaka, managing director of Daikin Airconditioning Cambodia. “Though Daikin as an organization is a century outdated, Daikin Cambodia is barely a yr outdated. It’s nonetheless a child, however will quickly develop up.”
Based in Osaka in 1924, Daikin is one among Japan’s oldest air-con firms, however as Japan’s inhabitants — and thus potential buyer base — drops, the agency is keying in on abroad development.
The enterprise’ newest enlargement into Cambodia highlights this shift. The dominion’s fast-growing inhabitants and predicted rise in median family earnings, paired with more and more excessive warmth attributable to local weather change, makes Cambodia a strong wager for firms like Daikin.
However as firms make main investments in Southeast Asia, specialists word that extra air-con entry might exacerbate inequality points rife within the area.
Local weather scientists, in the meantime, level to a vicious cycle that’s more likely to proceed if unaddressed: as air conditioner use rises in Southeast Asia and across the globe attributable to excessive warmth, so do emissions.
The worldwide cooling trade is estimated to account for 7% of worldwide electrical energy demand and three% of carbon emissions, whereas the variety of air-con items worldwide is predicted to leap from 2.4 billion this yr to five.6 billion in 2050.
“The demand for air-con is so enormous, its carbon footprint is equally excessive. That demand is not going to go away,” mentioned Sanjay Srivastava, chief of the Catastrophe Danger Discount Part throughout the United Nations Financial and Social Fee for Asia and the Pacific (U.N. ESCAP).
“Air con does nonetheless have a task in each local weather adaptation and mitigation, however provided that technological improvements can catch up and make AC extra environment friendly and cut back its emissions,” Srivastava mentioned. “That is the place Japanese firms can play a vital position.”
Emissions loop
The Paris Settlement’s objective of limiting warming to 1.5 levels Celsius is now unattainable based on some main scientists and a warmer world will imply extra reliance on air-con.
Amid that actuality, dozens of nations, together with Japan and Cambodia, and a big group of trade giants, together with Daikin, signed the 2023 World Cooling Pledge at COP28 in Dubai.
However realizing the pledge’s objectives to cut back cooling-related emissions by 68% by 2050, enhance the worldwide common effectivity of latest air conditioners by 50% and considerably enhance entry to sustainable cooling by 2030 is a frightening job — particularly as developments in fast-growing economies in areas, like Southeast Asia, level to an increase within the cooling trade’s electrical energy consumption.
An Worldwide Vitality Company (IEA) report printed in 2019 discovered the vitality use for air conditioners elevated practically eightfold over the previous 30 years among the many members of the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Whereas the report discovered that solely 15% of houses in Southeast Asia have air-conditioning, the IEA forecasts greater temperatures and higher wages might see the variety of air-conditioning items in Southeast Asia leap from 40 million in 2017 to over 300 million by 2040.
This predicted pattern is what Daikin is positioning itself to capitalize on.
Within the announcement of Daikin’s new Cambodia services, the corporate cited the dominion as a “promising market” due to its anticipated inhabitants development. The discharge mentioned that Cambodia’s total heating, air flow, and air-con (HVAC) market is anticipating 10% annual development over the subsequent 5 years.
Hem Vanndy, Cambodia’s minister of trade, science, expertise and innovation in Cambodia, mentioned Daikin’s transfer into the nation “represents greater than a enterprise enlargement, it’s a sturdy affirmation of the boldness that Japanese and different buyers place in Cambodia’s financial and industrial potential.”
Japan is one among Cambodia’s high international assist donors. Ties between Tokyo and Phnom Penh transcend the political realm, together with partnerships between universities and companies spanning local weather resilient infrastructure, landmine detection expertise and a spread of enterprise sectors.
Daikin will not be the one main Japanese manufacturing firm benefiting from these predicted developments and Japan’s current relationship with international locations in Southeast Asia.
In Might, Mitsubishi Electrical Group opened a industrial consultant workplace in Phnom Penh because it seeks to spice up air conditioner gross sales in Cambodia. Earlier this yr, Panasonic was reported to be boosting its manufacturing at its essential manufacturing unit for air conditioner components in Vietnam and beginning gross sales for HVAC infrastructure in Cambodia.
“With enhancing dwelling and life-style requirements in Cambodia, we’re witnessing a speedy rise in demand for electrical home equipment, air-conditioners and efficient chilly chain options, particularly for the meals and agro-industrial sector,” mentioned Hem Vanndy.
This “speedy rise” has been seen internationally and has led to the marked enhance within the cooling trade’s local weather change-causing emissions.
“Our hope and plan is to contribute to Cambodia’s objective to realize carbon neutrality by 2050, whereas additionally rising as a enterprise within the nation and throughout the area,” Tanaka mentioned.
Daikin, like many firms and international locations, has vowed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Tanaka defined that Daikin’s developments in energy-saving mechanisms and a extra eco-friendly refrigerant had been designed to help international objectives to chop carbon emissions.
In line with Daikin’s most up-to-date sustainability report, the corporate’s greenhouse gasoline emissions in fiscal 2023 totaled practically 330 million tons of carbon dioxide. About 84% was emitted throughout using Daikin merchandise, with air conditioners contributing 67% of those emissions — or practically 222 million tons of CO2.
To slash emissions, Daikin goals to change to inverter merchandise to enhance effectivity and promote using low “international warming potential” refrigerants, like the brand new R-32 refrigerant — using which contributed to a 19% discount in residential air conditioner emissions in 2023.
These efforts are gaining added significance as local weather change accelerates.
Excessive warmth is starting to outrank Southeast Asia’s many different hazards, mentioned UNESCAP’s Srivastava, who challenged trade leaders to comply with by means of on their ambitions for internet neutrality by means of innovation.
“That is the place the position of air-con firms turns into so necessary,” Srivastava mentioned. “The innovation in air-con expertise must have minimal carbon footprints, environment friendly to cut back vitality consumption, if you’d like air-con to be a part of combating excessive warmth.”
Rising inequality
Warmth students, in the meantime, level to inequality points inherent within the rollout of expertise that not everybody can afford.
“Air situation may be superb when you can afford it, however that is dependent upon whether or not or not you may pay the payments,” mentioned Jason Kai Wei Lee, an affiliate professor on the Nationwide College of Singapore’s Yong Bathroom Lin College of Drugs. “Local weather change is an inequality subject. We are going to additional exacerbate inequality as a result of those that are most susceptible, normally is not going to have entry to expertise like aircons.”
As Southeast Asia’s wet season brings a welcome reduction to the acute warmth throughout the area, Lee, who additionally leads the college’s Warmth Resilience & Efficiency Centre, notes that “air-con is without doubt one of the greatest innovations of humankind, however the issue is that this expertise must be allotted to those that want it most and that isn’t taking place.”
He particularly cited farmers, fishers and development staff, exceedingly widespread professions in Southeast Asia with a excessive publicity to excessive warmth.
“Warmth is a silent killer,” Lee mentioned. “You possibly can really feel it for certain, however you may’t see and it comes and goes, like a ghost, which makes folks overlook about it throughout sure seasons. But when left unaddressed, excessive warmth will proceed to creep in as a disaster in Southeast Asia.”
