The World Bank, from its headquarters in Washington, provides loans and grants for capital projects in low- and middle-income countries and this funding is to promote low-carbon and inclusive cooling solutions in nine countries around the world.
The World Bank’s Cooling Facility, through which monies from the UNFCCC’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) will be channelled, is one of the world’s first multi-country financing initiatives to focus on cooling. It will seek to help countries develop the necessary market infrastructure, financing mechanisms, and policies and regulations to deploy low-carbon cooling.
With a focus on space cooling, refrigeration and cold chains, the Cooling Facility will help address barriers which, it says, have so far limited the deployment of low-carbon cooling technologies.
It will work with nine countries across different sectors, looking at different cooling solutions. In El Salvador, Sao Tome and Principe and Somalia, the facility will support “reliable and climate friendly” vaccine cold chains as well as low-carbon cooling in health facilities. In Kenya and Malawi, the Cooling Facility will support low-carbon and affordable cooling in rural communities and agricultural sectors, and North Macedonia, Panama, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, will receive support for passive and low carbon cooling solutions for more energy-efficient buildings.
The monies from the GCF is expected to bring an additional USD722.8-million in World Bank co-financing.
Sustainable cooling has been identified by the World Bank as cooling is vital for both health and prosperity, continuing with the current state of cooling models will be a disaster for the planet, and investment into cooling is a major opportunity to develop new technologies.