Principles for National Cooling Plans
A National Cooling Plan (NCP) is a roadmap that sets out sustainable cooling strategies for a country. This can include plans for protecting vulnerable groups from the heat, policies to reduce the climate impact of cooling appliances, and initiatives to increase access to efficient, climate-friendly, and affordable cooling solutions.
This brief provides high-level guiding principles for countries to draw on when considering their development of NCPs (also known as Cooling Action Plans, or roadmaps). It draws on our NCP work in over 25 countries.
K-CEP Year 2 Annual Report: Galvanizing a Movement for Efficient, Clean Cooling for All
The past year brought new attention to the dangerous cycle that comes with cooling in a warming world. As the planet heats up and incomes rise, demand for air conditioning and refrigeration are also rising, adding to the greenhouse gas emissions that further warm the world. The increased demand for cooling thus exacerbates the very problem it seeks to address.
In K-CEP’s second year, we began to see fruits of seeds we planted in 2017. With 97% of our funds allocated, K-CEP is now in implementation mode, partners are at work on five continents, and we can already report some early wins.
K-CEP’s Year Two Annual Report describes this momentum, laying out the breadth and depth of work our partners have accomplished and the growing number of commitments being made by governments and the cooling industry.
Efficient, Clean Cooling: A Major Near-Term Opportunity for China
Cooling is central to health, prosperity, and the environment. Efficient, clean cooling underpins many Sustainable Development Goals and represents an opportunity to avoid substantial greenhouse gas emissions. However, most cooling is currently energy intensive and highly polluting – particularly because of the impact it has on upstream electricity. Existing pollution needs to be cut urgently and booming demand for future cooling met sustainably.
China is the largest manufacturer, consumer, and exporter of cooling technologies, yet the Chinese market still has room to grow. Meeting cooling demand while taking robust action to improve the energy efficiency of cooling equipment and moving to low global warming potential refrigerants can be at the core of the implementation of China’s key strategies.This includes Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement, the Three-year Plan on Defending the Blue Sky, Construction of an Ecological Civilisation, Made in China 2025, and the Green Belt and Road Initiative.
This brief describes the benefits presented by efficient, clean cooling and highlights how China can unlock them through ambitious efficiency standards, enhanced strategies and plans, and action on cooling initiatives, finance, and exports.
Global Climate Impact from Hospital Cooling
Cooling is crucial for health. Thermal regulation minimizes heat stress and improves mental function and sleep. Refrigeration prevents spoilage of food, medicines, vaccines, and blood. Unsurprisingly, hospitals have a large demand for cooling for both patients and medical products. Given that hospitals’ cooling demand requires large amounts of energy consumption, hospitals are also responsible for large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, representing a significant percentage of healthcare’s climate impact.
With increased attention to providing better and more health care and associated increases in spending (particularly in middle income countries), and absent efforts to improve efficiency and/or decarbonize the power grid, the climate impact of hospital cooling is expected to rise, particularly in a warming world.
While there have been select country estimates, there have been no global estimates for the climate impacts of hospital cooling, until now. This brief and the underlying approach estimates the collective climate impact of hospital cooling globally.
Cooling as a Service (CaaS) knowledge brief
The standard business model of delivering cooling typically involves the manufacture, sale, use, and disposal of equipment. Higher production volumes generally support more sales and more profit. As a result, manufacturers can lack a strong incentive to voluntarily focus on minimizing the energy and resource use of cooling products. Alternative business models are possible and can promote much more energy and resource efficient technologies.
This brief presents a new approach to cooling – Cooling as a Service (CaaS) – which is based on the servitization concept that is rapidly penetrating other marketplaces. CaaS, in its purest sense, involves customers paying for the cooling they use rather than the physical product or infrastructure that delivers the cooling (e.g., air conditioner).
Chilling Prospects: Providing Sustainable Cooling for All.
The Future of Cooling: Opportunities for energy-efficient air conditioning.
Cooling efficiency finance case studies
The IEA estimates that $1.6 trillion will need to be spent on improving heating and cooling efficiency in buildings from 2014-2035 to implement new policy commitments announced at COP21. Many industrial, commercial, and residential cooling consumers will be capital constrained when faced with meeting these investments. A substantial proportion (the IEA estimates 40%) of the efficient, clean cooling investment requirement will need to come from external sources.
For consumers needing external funding, climate finance – whether from governments, development banks, philanthropic foundations, or in partnership with the private sector – can play a vital role in unlocking and providing the capital needed for efficient, clean cooling.
This briefing paper examines seven examples of finance schemes either exclusively targeting greater cooling efficiency or including cooling efficiency as part of a broader energy efficiency remit.
K-CEP Year 1 Annual Report: Windows to the Future
K-CEP’s Year One Annual Report looks back over the program’s first 12 months, in which the team has been laying the foundation for the program to ‘take-off’.
Despite it still being early days for the program, this first annual report details some very exciting progress. K-CEP is reporting on close to $30 million committed to projects, including direct support to 38 countries. Alongside new partners, K-CEP is charting new territory: for the first time, the UN’s Montreal Protocol experts are diving into energy efficiency and connecting with energy policy-makers. For the first time under the Kigali Amendment, the Montreal Protocol’s Multilateral Fund will support an industrial manufacturing conversion project (which K-CEP is supporting to bring in efficiency). K-CEP’s grantee community is collectively tracking results, and we are all learning and adapting as we go.