I know this is kind of off topic but I wanted to point out that the refrigerant that escapes from air conditioners when they leak or are thrown away, is a bigger contributor to climate change than the electricity they use.
Good point! Freon (CFC-12, with 10800x warming potential of CO2) has thankfully been banned by Montreal Protocol of 1987, and HCFC-22 (5280x) is being phased out. We are using what now, HFC-32 at 2430x? How much refrigerant does an AC contain, about a mole? I’ve been taught that refrigerant should normally never leak throughout the lifetime of the appliance (technicians are even prohibited from “recharging” refrigerant without identifying and fixing the point of the leak first) and that all gas must be recovered after end-of-life, but we can’t be sure that’s really what happens every time.
In that case leaking 1 mole of HFC-32 would be equivalent to… running the 1kW AC for 360 hours?
In my experience with the automotive industry. AC systems leak frequently and it is very common for the leak to be so small that it is not always possible to find the source.
So the majority of the time a fluorescent dye is added to the system and it is recharged with refrigerant to help find the source when it gets low again.
It’s common to have a leak so slow and undetectable that no one notices a system is low on refrigerant until a year later when it is summer again.
Also, auto parts stores sell cans of refrigerant so anybody can just recharge a leaking system, which is often cheaper than actually fixing the leak. So these AC systems are just constantly leaking refrigerant and being recharged.
I wouldn’t be surprised if AC systems in buildings are handled similarly.
Even if a law is made that a failed part must be identified before the system can be recharged, the technician who can’t find a leak is going to just pick a part (randomly or educated guess) to replace if he can’t find the leak.