As the world faces the looming energy crisis and everyone from governments to businesses to home owners scramble to find ways to make their building more energy efficient and warmer in winter. One major problem the world is facing is that of the growing demand for air conditioning, after all it is far easier to generate heat in cold environments than it is to remove it from hot ones.

In fact energy demand in developed regions of warm countries including the US, China and Arab states to power air conditioning and other cooling systems has become so great that it is now out stripping the demand for energy to power systems that keep us warm. It is estimated that the world’s power consumption for air conditioning alone is set to increase 33-fold by 2100, and there lies the problem. We’ve spent so many resources finding ultra-efficient ways to remain warm that we haven’t stopped to think of how we will deal with climates at the other end of the spectrum.

Already the US uses as much energy keeping them cool as the whole of Africa uses on everything, and with China and India catching up we may be finding ourselves running straight towards another energy crisis, since the majority of this energy is still created by burning fossil fuels. Even in Britain where we have some of the worst weather in the world, refrigeration accounts for around 20% of our energy expenditure in order to keep everything from food, buildings, computer banks and cars comfortable and in some cases even habitable.

Perhaps the major pollutant cause is not the CO2 produced from running refrigeration systems but the fact that many run on vapour-compression systems which use toxic hydroflurocarbons (HFCs) to absorb and release electricity. These HFCs are perfectly safe inside the system, it is when the system breaks or the tanks are compromised that the gas – which is according to some estimates 4000 more dangerous than CO2 – is released into the atmosphere and does its damage.

It is for this very reason that the US has established the first minimum standard of maintenance for commercial refrigeration equipment, as a commitment to reducing the risk these systems cause to the environment.

The fact that these systems are so very necessary to our way of life means that they are unlikely to decline in their use in the years to come and that is why it is so crucial that they are maintained properly.