According to Cold Hard Facts 4, Australians operate more than 62 million individual pieces of equipment with a refrigerated circuit (refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pumps). This equipment uses a refrigerant bank of more than 55,000 tonnes. There is no other class of cross-cutting equipment in the economy (one that is used in every possible industrial, commercial, educational, public and domestic setting) that is both so numerous, and so energy intensive. This vast stock of equipment is estimated to have consumed more than 66,500 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity in 2022, or around 24% of all electricity produced in Australia.
In 2022, the total expenditure of the RAC industry on new equipment installation, maintenance, wages, and energy consumed in that year was equal to more than 2% of the nation's GDP, supported by a workforce that represents 2.6% of total employment in Australia. Additionally, estimates are that in 2022 Australians spent around $12.7 billion buying and installing new devices across all classes of RAC equipment.
