Air Conditioner Shipments Up 10 Percent in 2020

The HVAC industry recently completed a solid year despite obstacles

Despite a national health pandemic and a fair amount of inventory delivery issues, the 2020 AHRI shipment numbers just released today show the HVAC industry recently completed a solid year.

Aided by a hot summer around the country, 2020 air conditioner shipments saw a 10.3% increase over 2019 with a total of over 5.9 million air conditioners shipped. Similarly, heat pump shipments increased by 9.9% with a total of over 3.4 million heat pumps shipped.

“What we do is important and during this pandemic we saw incredible demand for our products,” Mike Branson, president of Air Rheem Manufacturing, said in a recent NEWSmakers podcast. “People were holed up in their houses. They could not spend money on vacation and were spending so much time in their houses they thought they should get a new air conditioner.”

The numbers for furnace shipments were not a gaudy. For 2020, gas warm air furnaces saw a decrease of 2.6% when compared to 2019. A little over 3.3 million gas warm air furnaces were shipped in 2020. The decrease was even greater with oil warm air furnaces. Oil furnaces decreased 10.3 percent with total shipments just north of 36,000.

Some of this can be attributed to the mild beginning to the winter that occurred in late 2020.

U.S. shipment of residential gas storage water heaters saw a 4.7% increase in 2020 with over 4.5 million products being shipped. The increase was even more impressive for residential electric storage water heater shipments with 10.8% growth for over 4.6 million products shipped.

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Kyle Gargaro is Editorial Director & Associate Publisher of The ACHR NEWS. He can be reached at 248-244-1720 or kylegargaro@achrnews.com. Gargaro has been with The ACHR NEWS since 2004, first as Legislation Editor, then Managing Editor, and now as Editorial Director & Associate Publisher. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism.

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