Access to Cooling for All Without Overheating the Planet - Clean Cooling Congress ....

This week's Clean Cooling Congress, (24th and 25th April) hosted with the UK Government's Dept of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the World Bank, Mission Innovation and University of Birmingham will bring together industry, international organisations, academia and government officials from both developed and developing countries, as well as representatives of NGOs and civil society to work together to define how we can delivery access to cooling for all who need it, sustainably and it in the shortest possible time.

Between now and 2050, it is estimated that 19 pieces of cooling equipment (such as room-size AC units, refrigerators and industrial size chillers) will be deployed every second. Despite this massive increase in cooling provision, access to cooling for all people that need it will still not be a reality, and the poorest in many hot countries will feel the impact.

Access to cooling should no longer be a luxury, it is an issue of equity that requires fast action to protect the most vulnerable. Cooling delivers fresh food, safe medicines, protection from heat and thermal comfort for a growing number of people that will live in a warming world. In more and more countries, air conditioning and refrigeration will be vital for economic productivity.

How the world meets this challenge and provides cooling services to a growing middle class and to the vulnerable poor in the coming decades will have important ramifications for our climate: without innovations and targeted interventions the energy demand for cooling could increase more than five times by 2050 – and fast growing direct and indirect GHG emissions associated with cooling equipment can easily outpace all our attempts to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement and halt global warming.

Worldwide action on sustainable cooling is now recognised as essential to achieve key global goals including:

·      A reduction in climate-damaging GHG emissions in-line with the ambitions of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Montreal Protocol’s Kigali Amendment.

·      Productivity increases in poor countries to help achieve the SDGs, reduce poverty, protect people at risk and share prosperity among all.

·      Improved support to developing country in their adaptation to the effects of climate change, particularly the impact of increasing heat stress.

Not only is the provision of cooling technology a global issue, but also the policies that guide the deployment of cooling solutions, as well as the industries that deliver them, are globally connected too. However, if we are to take a more sustainable approach and transform cooling, there are important questions to be answered; for example:

·      How much cooling is required to meet societal, environmental, health, economic and adaptation goals, with no-one left behind ….in a warming world?

·      What solutions are available to deliver access to sustainable cooling for all who need it?

·      What are the barriers to scaling new solutions and accelerating delivery of access to sustainable cooling for all who need it?

·      How can we collaborate – industry, governments, academia and development institutions among others – to rapidly deploy these solutions?

Answering these questions is necessary to transform the cooling sectors and deliver access to cooling for all who need it in the shortest possible time – whilst achieving sustainability. It can also lead us to “win-win-win” solutions, in which there is faster innovation, greater market entry and growth, healthier populations, lowered energy consumption, much reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and enhanced access to improved cooling services at affordable lifecycle costs.

We look forward to reporting back.