4. Data and sources

CBS has obtained historical sales figures (2010-2023) for the Dutch market in terms of number of units, average cooling capacity and efficiency through BSRIA Market Intelligence. For sales year 2009, CBS estimated these data. Assuming a lifespan of 15 years, the total installed cooling capacity and average efficiency could thus be determined for 2023. For the distribution by sectors, information from BSRIA on the distribution by sectors for different types of cooling systems in sales year 2023 was used. As no further information was available, that distribution was applied to all sales years.

The cooling capacity of the installed base by the end of 2023 is estimated to be 6.2 gigawatts in the residential sector and 9.5 gigawatts in non-residential buildings, with an average SPF_p of 2.79 (residential) and 2.47 (non-residential). The table below shows a breakdown by type of cooling system in terms of both cooling capacity and average efficiency. Systems that do not meet the minimum efficiency requirement in the Delegated Regulation (SPF_p of 1.4) have been excluded.

Besides cooling capacity and average efficiency, the number of equivalent full-load hours is also required for the calculation based on standard values. The equivalent full-load hours are determined based on the number of cooling degree days in the reporting year. Cooling degree days are a measure of cooling requirements in a given period and are calculated using the average temperature per day and two parameters: a minimum temperature and a reference temperature. The number of cooling degree days is calculated as the sum of the deviations from the reference temperature for all days where the average temperature exceeds the minimum temperature. The Delegated Regulation sets the reference and minimum temperatures at 18 degrees. A day with an average temperature of 20 degrees thus yields 2 cooling degree days. Days with an average temperature of 18 degrees or lower do not count. CBS uses averaged daily temperature data from Agri4Cast (Joint Research Centre European Commission, 2024) for this calculation.

The number of cooling degree days in 2023 was 147. That is considerably higher than what Eurostat has published elsewhere (Eurostat, 2024). This is because different parameters were used for calculating that figure, namely a reference temperature of 21 degrees and a minimum temperature of 24 degrees.