The Hot Reality: Living in a +50°C World Conference

"Global thinking and collaboration for surviving and thriving on a hotter planet"

The Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-chain Inaugural conference, 19th October 2023, ACES campus, Ruburizi, Kigali, Rwanda

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Cooling and cold-chains are not optional or lifestyle luxuries. They are critical infrastructure for a well-functioning, well adapted, resilient and healthy society and economy; as vital as a water-pipe, electricity cable or road. They enable our access to basic essentials of life, such as food and health, and provide safe environments to live and work. More broadly, they also underpin modern communications, trade and commerce, and learning.

Extreme record-breaking temperatures are being experienced this year throughout the world; temperatures that are in the upper 40s and over 50°C in several locations. Central to humans living and thriving in these higher temperature environments will be the need for more cooling. ?But making hot air cold is energy intensive and economically and environmentally very costly. The hotter the air, the more energy consumed to cool it down: the higher the cost, and, paradoxically, the greater the demand for cooling. Cooling already accounts for more than 10% of anthropogenic emissions. Energy demand for space cooling is already the fastest growing energy service in buildings worldwide. Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are the fastest-growing source of GHG emissions in the world due to the increasing global demand for space cooling and refrigeration.

“The Hot Reality: Living in a +50°C World” is a project led by the Africa Centre for Sustainable Cooling ?and Cold-chain (ACES) and the UK’s Centre for Sustainable Cooling and brings together an international group of multi-discipline, multi-sector experts. The aim: to explore through the lens of the cooling needs how humans can adapt in a sustainable, resilient, just and equitable way to living in a world in which seasonal ambient temperatures are continuously rising and extreme heatwaves are becoming more frequent and prolonged, along with other extreme weather being experienced more broadly.

And sadly, we are starting from a bad position. The number of rural and urban poor at high risk from lack of cooling has risen by more than 15% to 1.2bn since 2020 and forecast scenarios for populations at risk through to 2030 showthat on current trends 1.22 billion people will still be at high risk in 2030 – current interventions are materially not adequate.

To meet the challenge, solutions will require changes in human behaviour and approaches as well as radical innovation in technology, business and financial models, and the pace of policy intervention will need to increase. To ensure success, we need to take a systems level perspective that reflects the highly connected world in which we live, learn, work and play. It is only by taking such a view that we will? identify gaps in knowledge and research needs that, if addressed, could move the needle globally on making progress towards achieving well-adapted and resilient populations worldwide.

On 19th October, as the third day of our ACES Forum, we are holding a conference a to present initial findings from the project work to date and stimulate further debate and input to inform a forthcoming report to be published later this year.? Our hope is that through collaboration, we can make a landmark contribution to the public discourse on how to adapt to, and building societal resilience to the impacts of extreme temperatures by starting to tackle one of the world’s most pressing ’here now’ climate change challenges in a warming world – access to sustainably cooling for all who will need it.

For further details or to pre-register for an invitation to the Forum and/or Conference, please contact?[email protected]