In May 2024, the residential air conditioning industry has entered the peak season battle stage. The optimism of China's air-conditioning market in 2024 is in stark contrast to the current downturn in retail demand, but a group of key elites in the air-conditioning industry gathered in Nanchang are not hesitant, and are still energetic and making suggestions for the future of the industry at the 2024 working conference of the Air Conditioning Professional Committee of the China Household Electrical Appliances Association (hereinafter referred to as the Air Conditioning Committee).
On May 16, representatives from more than 30 upstream and downstream enterprises in the air-conditioning industry across the country came to Nanchang to attend this important professional conference in the air-conditioning industry in 2024. Industry representatives agreed that no matter how challenging the market is, the air conditioning industry will face the challenges under the strategic concept of "sustainable development" as the core and grasp the opportunities for change in the global air conditioning market.
"Sustainable development", from national strategies to industry opportunities
In the wave of globalization, sustainable development has become the focus of common concern of all countries. As one of the key technical paths of the air-conditioning industry, sustainable development is also an important catalyst to promote the transformation of the air-conditioning industry and the comprehensive upgrading of the industrial chain. This is also the reason why this meeting is still attracting attention when the market trend is not optimistic.
The annual working meeting of the Air Conditioning Special Committee was undertaken by Highly Electric, and the participating companies included Midea, Haier, TCL, Oaks, Hisense, Daikin, Panasonic, Changhong, Philips and other air conditioning machine companies, as well as core suppliers from the upstream of the industrial chain such as GMCC, Huawei HiSilicon, Ruizhi Electromechanical, Ruifu Chemical, and guests from all parties who are highly concerned about the development of China's air conditioning industry. The meeting was unprecedented, with a total of 33 companies attending the meeting, among which Weisheng Technology, Hengxinji Electronics, and Shenzhen Biyi Microelectronics became the three upstream suppliers who newly joined the Air Conditioning Special Committee.
Miao Xiongwei, vice president of Midea Air Conditioning, said in his speech as the representative of the chairman of the Air Conditioning Special Committee that the air conditioning industry is currently facing many challenges such as sluggish domestic market demand, rising prices of refrigerants and raw materials, and hot weather.
Chen Jianbo, Information Consulting Department of China Household Electrical Appliances Association, explained the current market environment faced by the air conditioning industry in the analysis of the air conditioning industry in 2024. He said that in the first quarter of 2024, China's macroeconomic operation is stable, while the real estate market is running at a low level, consumer confidence is still insufficient, raw material prices are soaring, and "trade-in" to promote consumption is increasing, the output of air conditioners reached 68.78 million units, a year-on-year increase of 16.5%, but the domestic retail sales increased by less than 4% year-on-year, and the contrast between the surge in domestic shipments and the pressure on retail sales is very obvious. Among them, the power of offline retail of air conditioners in the rural market is obviously insufficient, the sales volume has fallen greatly, the share of new level 1 energy efficiency products has continued to grow, and the scale of the fresh air air conditioning market has shrunk.
Chen Jianbo specifically analyzed the export data of the air conditioning industry in the first quarter of 2024. He said that in 2024, with the recovery of overseas demand, the decline of inventories, the rise in raw material prices and the uncertainty caused by the situation in the Red Sea, the pace of stocking will be promoted to varying degrees. As a result, China's air conditioning exports performed strongly in the first quarter of 2024, with a year-on-year increase of nearly 15%, with Southeast Asia and South America being the largest markets for growth, while North America was a rapidly declining market.
As the host of the meeting, Ji Shengchang, vice president of Highly Electric, said that the current air conditioning industry is facing complex changes in the market environment, although the domestic market is facing huge challenges, but the global market still has room for development. As an important air-conditioning compressor company in the world, Highly will take responsibility to promote the healthy and sustainable development of the industry, and contribute to the country's green and low-carbon cause and the harmonious upgrading of the industry.
Wang Lei, Secretary-General of China Household Electrical Appliances Association, concluded that although there are many uncertainties in the current air conditioning market, in the long run, in the context of global warming, air conditioning products still have room for market growth, and at the same time, the industry will have higher requirements for improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions. "The change from the market to international and domestic environmental protection and energy conservation policies has presented challenges and opportunities for enterprises every time, depending on how we treat it. We in the air-conditioning industry should take a long-term view, not only to maintain resilience, but also to stand at the height of the global market, and carry out forward-looking technological innovation and technology layout, so as to achieve the '14th Five-Year Plan' development goal of becoming a global leader in home appliance technology innovation." ”
Focus on "sustainable development" and focus on the adaptation of the global green system
Markus Wypior, representative of GIZ, came to the scene as a special guest of the conference to interpret the EU's sustainable development concepts and policy trends. On behalf of GIZ, Markus has been working with the China Home Appliance Association for 15 years, and he has witnessed the rapid development of China's home appliance industry in terms of scale and great efforts in environmental substitution.
According to Markus, the EU has proposed a series of low-carbon development measures through the "Fit for 55" policy package. In order to reduce the EU's greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, the EU will make policy provisions on product energy efficiency, renewable energy use, carbon trading and carbon border mechanisms, and the Climate and Social Fund, which pose challenges for global suppliers.
According to the relevant policy design, the EU will gradually adjust the energy consumption structure, such as adjusting the current energy consumption structure composed of buildings, industry and transportation to a dual structure composed of public facilities and household equipment. In the ideal design, it is hoped that the structure of the energy consumption of household equipment, mainly heating equipment, will be adjusted to a diversified structure composed of electric energy, renewable energy, and fossil fuels. Such policy adjustments have put forward new requirements for the design of sustainable cooling solutions in future buildings in the EU, including photovoltaics, energy storage, and air conditioning energy efficiency and refrigerants. Markus emphasized that although the carbon border mechanism established by the EU does not seem to have anything to do with household appliances, the establishment of this system shows that the EU is very determined on the road of carbon emission reduction.
For Chinese air-conditioning companies, in order to cope with the firmly implemented EU sustainable development strategy, they should make innovations and efforts in the application of environmentally friendly refrigerants, product energy efficiency and low-carbon solutions such as photovoltaics. According to Markus, the EU has made it clear that it will continue to reduce HFC emissions, and according to the amendment to the EU F-gas regulation that will come into effect in March 2024, the EU will start a large-scale reduction in HFC emissions in 2025 by 75% of the 2015 baseline annual emissions, until 2050 is fully achieved with zero emissions. The application advantages of environmentally friendly refrigerants including R290, R152a, R1270 and other environmentally friendly refrigerants are very obvious, although this poses a challenge to the R&D and sales costs of China's air conditioning industry, but the efforts to match the policy regulations to transform into more environmentally friendly and energy-saving green home appliances will also contain huge market opportunities.
Liu Ting, Deputy Director of the Green Chain Research Institute of the Foreign Cooperation and Exchange Center of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, introduced the progress and trends of China's sustainable development policies to the delegates. She said that the world is facing the dual challenges of climate, environment and economic pressure, and in order to cope with the challenges, 136 countries, 116 regions, 234 cities and 683 enterprises have proposed carbon neutrality goals, covering 88% of the world's emissions, 90% of GDP (PPP), and 85% of the population. However, in many countries, the actual process is far behind the target plan.
According to Liu Ting, the goal of "Beautiful China" in 2050, the principle of "six stability" and "six guarantees" in the supply chain, the dual carbon strategy and the dual cycle development pattern have built the driving force for green and sustainable development, and have been put into action to drive industrial transformation in terms of building a green industrial system and supporting supply-side structural reform. In particular, she talked about the creation of a green supply chain, the core concept is to rely on the market mechanism led by commodity buyers, with the purpose of reducing the environmental impact of the whole life cycle of products, through environmental and economic policies and market regulation and control means, using the government, enterprise green procurement and public green consumption to guide, drive the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain to take energy conservation and environmental protection measures, carry out green transformation of the whole industrial chain, and reduce pollution emissions and environmental impact. After listing many successful cases, Liu Ting emphasized that in the process of research and construction of the green value chain in the air-conditioning industry, it is necessary to pay close attention to relevant policies and standards, fully understand global green trade, and create a favorable international market environment.
With the increase in additional functions of air conditioning, how to further improve the energy efficiency standard
Cheng Jianhong, a researcher at the China Institute of Standardization, introduced the progress and trend of the revision of China's energy efficiency standards for room air conditioners at the meeting. He said that the state has issued a lot of policies and implementation action plans for the refrigeration industry to promote energy-saving and low-carbon actions, and its goal is to achieve industrial upgrading while continuously improving the level of energy conservation, and promote China's refrigeration and air-conditioning industry to become a global leader. He deliberately emphasized that the first phase of the "Green and Efficient Refrigeration Action Plan" released in 2019 proposed that "by 2022, the energy efficiency access level of household air conditioners will be increased by 30%, multi-connected air conditioners will be increased by 40%, refrigerated display cabinets will be increased by 20%, and heat pump water heaters will be increased by 20%, and by 2030, there will be pressure to complete the goal of increasing the energy efficiency access level of major refrigeration products by more than 15%. In addition, under the framework of the global COP28 energy efficiency doubling plan, the further improvement of China's air conditioning energy efficiency is also an important strategic direction.
Cheng Jianhong shared industry statistics that in the four years since the implementation of the new energy efficiency standards, the proportion of new Level 1 energy efficiency air conditioners in the domestic market has increased from 20% to more than 50%, and the proportion of inverter air conditioners has also increased from 60% to nearly 100%. At the same time, the main product structure of the market is fully optimized, and the demand for multiple scenarios determines that the air conditioning products have changed significantly from single refrigeration and heating to multi-functional additional type, but at the same time, different types of additional functions have different impacts on energy consumption, such as zonal air supply function and human body intelligent identification technology can reduce operating energy consumption, and heat exchanger and filter self-cleaning function can also reduce total energy consumption; The fresh air function will increase the average load of the air conditioner by about 11%, and the ultraviolet sterilization function and dust removal and filtration function will also increase the energy consumption by about 2%~4%.
Therefore, in the context of the overall increase in additional functions of products and the improvement of energy efficiency levels, how to scientifically adopt which evaluation system and how to reasonably use dynamic test methods in the next version of energy efficiency standards need to be fully studied and fully prepared for the revision of new energy efficiency standards.
Leading scientific and technological innovation, Highly creates a model
As the organizer of the air-conditioning special committee, one of the deputy director units of the air-conditioning special committee, and the world's top air-conditioning compressor enterprise established for 31 years, Highly Electric's development in scientific and technological innovation and intelligent manufacturing has attracted the attention of the industry.
Zhou Yi, Chief Technology Officer of Shanghai Highly Electric Appliance Co., Ltd., explained the thinking and practice of Highly in sustainable development to the delegates. According to reports, at present, Highly has 4 factories around the world, with a total production capacity of 33 million units. Zhou Yi introduced the development path of Highly scientific and technological innovation, from the introduction of technology at the beginning of its establishment in 1993 to independent innovation, from zero foundation to the construction of five global R&D centers, and built a technology R&D system of "internal and external integration, upstream and downstream in-depth cooperation, resource sharing, collaboration and efficiency". Under the innovative R&D framework driven by both market and technology, Highly has formed its own technical route with the core concept of "energy saving, environmental protection and resource saving", which presents a piece of green on this huge technical route decomposition map, which is also a technology roadmap with green value as the core.
Zhou Yi explained in detail how Highly has its key technologies, the technical development direction of compressors and its excellent R&D capabilities have been formed, thus creating a unique cultural atmosphere of scientific and technological innovation in Highly In order to let the delegates have an in-depth understanding of Highly manufacturing level and innovation culture, Highly also invited all members of the Air Conditioning Committee to visit Highly Nanchang Base for a close visit.
Founded in December 2007, Nanchang Highly covers an area of 346,000 square meters, mainly responsible for the R&D and production of air-conditioning compressors with international leading level. As the first "going out" off-site enterprise of Highly Electric, Nanchang Highly has formed an annual production capacity of 24 million units, which is the largest production base of Highly Electric. After several years of construction, Nanchang Highly has become a national intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory, realizing the large-scale production of 1,300 models of hybrid flexible wires, the high-efficiency operation of 1 unit/second and the high-quality delivery of 2.86 PPM. In the future, this base will continue to be upgraded to fully release the new quality productivity of Highly and build it into a global compressor manufacturing center, a global compressor modern manufacturing base and a global intelligent manufacturing talent training base.