Inefficient air-cons are being dumped in Southeast Asia. That’s costly for consumers and the climate (www.channelnewsasia.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 11 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Even reading the article, I'm not clear - when they say dumping, do they mean that these are used units that they are effectively recycling by reselling to other countries (good?) Or companies deliberately building piles of bad units that don't meet local standards to export (bad)?

[-] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Dumped air-cons refer to those produced by various brands that do not meet the minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) in the brands' own domestic markets. They end up being exported to places with less stringent standards.

I’d go by the explanation offered under the subsection “What is a dumped air conditioner”

[-] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Not sure how i missed that bit...

[-] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Stuff cheap to make but impossible to sell to westerners because of stringent laws. Just like cigarettes and asbestos.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Especially considering you don't really trash these I don't understand what "dumped" is.

Air conditioners are very valuable as scrap, if we're talking about bad units

[-] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago

Yes

[-] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Low capital cost for high operating cost. Where have I seen this before?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

In the us market there is a new standard for evaluating efficiencies seer2 and hspf2. The minimum standards are only 1.3 seer higher than the old standards. In that sense it’s a bit sensationalized.

The article touched on the upcoming change in the US market to switch to lower global warming potential refrigerants. The new ones are about a fifth lower.

These might be coming from Europe as the us is still transitioning. Additionally the old refrigerants are not barred from being manufactured and will be continued to be used to maintain older systems. Again this is somewhat sensationalized.

We already created the equipment and ‘spent’ carbon emissions to manufacturer these. It would be a waste to throw it away.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

If some of these are older, there have been several increases in minimum efficiency as well as switching away from older refrigerants

— https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40232

Story time: at the beginning of this year, my brother got a new air conditioner. However he got it dirt cheap because of surplus inventories that could no longer be sold, unless he bought “last year”. While jump in efficiency from this past increase in the minimum standard may be small, it was significant enough to make a huge difference in pricing and supply

[-] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Certainly, the equipment might become unusable, but rather than disposing of it, they are repurposing it elsewhere. Considering the environmental impact, whether the efficiencies and lower global warming potential (GWP) outweigh the benefits of discarding an already manufactured system, which would necessitate manufacturing anew for compliance, is uncertain.

I would estimate payback period to align with a lifespan of around 10 years, matching the expected duration of some of these systems. This estimate entirely anecdotal.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

payback period to align with a lifespan of around 10 years

That’s the critical fact: what is the payback in terms of cost were deployed to drive the decision, and in environmental impact which needs to constrain the decision.

It’s also important to know wether more inefficient units continued to be manufactured because there was still that secondary market, but calling it “dumping” implies not

this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023

77 points (97.5% liked)

World News

38468 readers

3324 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]