Our world is characterised by climate change-induced warming, population growth, and rapid urbanisation and development trends that are further intensifying the warming effects. Acting in parallel, these drivers are leading to an unprecedented increase in the global demand for cooling, including for more than 1 billion people who face serious risks because they lack adequate access to cooling to support essential needs such as for health and well-being, productivity and nutritious food.
The use of cooling is significant and growing in several sectors of the economy to satisfy critical needs related to thermal comfort in buildings, agriculture and food supply chains, storage and transfer of vaccines and medical products, transport and industrial processes.
The current baseline of an estimated 3.6 billion cooling appliances in use is projected to jump nearly four times by 2050 if cooling is provided to everybody who needs it, and not just those who can afford it (UNEP-IEA 2020). The current market behaviour defaults to addressing the rising need for cooling largely with a greater dependence on mechanical means for delivering air conditioning and refrigeration.
These cooling systems are generally very energy intensive and largely reliant on fossil fuel-generated electricity and refrigerants that are harmful to the climate – further multiplying the emissions and increasing global warming. Cooling is the world’s fastest growing contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. Under a business-as usual scenario, the energy requirement for cooling our buildings alone would jump an estimated 300% – to 6 200 terawatt-hours in 2050 – and the associated stock of room air conditioners would cumulatively emit enough greenhouse gas emissions to warm the planet 0.5°C by 2100 (RMI 2018).
On the one hand, the growth in cooling is inexorably linked with the development needs and socio-economic progress of nations. On the other hand, the current cooling practices – and the associated additions to grid infrastructure and increased greenhouse gas emissions – are perpetuating a downward spiral: cooling is further warming our world, necessitating even more cooling and disproportionately impacting those who do not have adequate financial resources to procure mechanical cooling solutions. And herein lies the cooling challenge.
Why cooling action is needed at a national level
The need of the hour is to equitably serve the growing demand for cooling without causing further warming. This requires targeted policy, technology and market levers to enable holistic solutions to address cooling, leveraging synergies across sectors, utilising passive cooling to the fullest extent possible, and meeting the mechanical cooling needs with the lowest possible energy and emissions footprint.
The benefits of doing this are far-reaching. Improving the cooling industry’s energy efficiency together with the transition to climate-friendly refrigerants can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 210-460 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent over the next four decades. These greenhouse gas emission cuts will be important to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Given its cross-cutting nature, addressing cooling holistically requires engaging multiple public and private sector stakeholders, whose interests may not always align. National Cooling Action Plans (NCAPs) can be an important instrument to drive such alignment by establishing strong political will and meaningful nationwide directives, leveraging inter-linkages with national and international agendas, and setting direction and actionable targets for addressing access to cooling while reducing its environmentally harmful impacts and maximising the socio-economic benefits.
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