Keeping it chill: How to meet cooling demand, while cutting emissions

Cooling protects people from rising temperatures, maintains food quality and safety, keeps vaccines stable and enables economic productivity. It is central to achieving the sustainable development goals. The flip side is that cooling growth, under business as usual, would lead to a doubling of the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – which cannot be allowed to happen if the world is to limit climate change to manageable levels.

 

The report, from the UNEP-led Cool Coalition, looks at actions in three areas. Deploying passive cooling measures, such as insulation, natural shading and ventilation, would dramatically reduce cooling loads. Higher efficiency standards, including through updated Minimum Energy Performance Standards and better labelling, would triple the global average efficiency of cooling equipment by 2050. A faster phase down of climate-warming hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants through the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol would also make a huge difference. If rapid grid decarbonization were added to these actions, predicted 2050 emissions could be reduced by 96 per cent.