2023 the year of fundamental paradigm swifts? The signs cannot be ignored.

The war in Ukraine causes immense suffering to the Ukrainian people which is not to compare with the discomfort in Europe due to the gas dependency on Russia.

The RepowerEU plan, the EU Green Deal, Renovation Wave, Fit for 55 by 2030 and the ongoing revision of the EPBD are the policy actions that will have a great impact on the HVAC&R industry in 2023. The European Commission advises to change from gas-fired boilers to electric Heat Pump systems to reduce the European gas consumption. This should be done anyway as the phasing out of fossil fuel use in buildings, is clearly mentioned in the draft EPBD. Using gas-fired boilers to heat our buildings should be phased out to be able to decarbonise our building stock by 2050. The war situation and the last IPCC report on climate change indicating that it will be almost impossible to stay below our 1.5–2.0 degree threshold, made it just more urgent.

When discussing with your customers energy saving measures, phasing out fossil fuels and investing in sustainable energy systems the cost effectiveness of our proposals is always on the table. Supporting financial incentives available at national level may support your proposals, convincing arguments that it is our obligation to save the world for the future generations should help. And in the case that you are able to produce an acceptable offer we encounter shortage of professional capacity and delayed delivery schedules of products.

And not to forget in this first post-epidemic year we still have to improve our ventilation systems and solutions as the health authorities warn us that a new epidemic is possible and we should use our time to make our buildings more epidemic resilient. We have to advice residents who are working more from home compared to the pre-covid years given the fact that this will not change in the future. Homes are often not designed for using spaces as office, ventilation, thermal comfort acoustics and lighting are not always meeting the standards. This may affect health and productivity. When upgrading homes to make them more energy efficient and sustainable, this situation has to be taken in account.

To summarise: the keywords for 2023 are improving the energy performance of our buildings, decarbonisation, health and ventilation. I expect that as in this RJ issue, these themes will be prominent in 2023, sometimes addressing details but also global holistic approaches. I thank the contributing authors who will address these issues during 2023.