Daikin Airconditioning India Pvt. Ltd., and Daikin Industries, Ltd. applied together with Nikken Sekkei Ltd. to The Global Cooling Prize (GCP) which was held in India. They were selected as the GCP Grand Finalist.
The GCP is an international competition endorsed by the Indian government, Mission Innovation and the Rocky Mountain Institute to explore technologies that can significantly reduce the climate impact of room air conditioners compared to equipment currently on the market. Applications began in 2018 and were narrowed down to 8 finalists on November 15, 2019. After testing the prototype for performance for two months, the prototype developed and proposed by Daikin under the advisory of Nikken Sekkei was selected as the winner of the Grand Prize.
This new concept employs a technology which can achieve comfort and energy savings at the same time by adequately controlling two indoor units in one room. Another new concept is that it utilizes the vaporization heat of water to further increase the energy efficiency of the equipment. Daikin adopted an out of the box approach such as choosing the refrigerant HFO-1234ze(E) which has a single digit Global Warming Potential (GWP). Thus, the innovative proposal based on unconventional ideas and solid technology was highly evaluated and won the Grand Prize. According to the Prize Secretariat, the results will be presented at the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference, known as COP26 in Glasgow, UK, in November of this year.
Read more on the GCP website.