Efficient and Clean Cooling

The Challenge

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that at 1.5ºC of global warming, an estimated 2.3 billion people could be both exposed and vulnerable to heatwave events: a threshold that could be reached as early as 2030.

In a warming world, over 1 billion people globally are already deemed at risk from the lack of cooling systems (SEforALL 2020). Overwhelmingly, many developing countries still lack access to cooling —from cold chains and refrigeration to ensure the safety of foods, medicine, and vaccines; to space cooling to ensure comfortable, healthy, and productive homes, institutions, and workplaces The need to adapt and build resilience in a rapidly warming climate —together with growing populations, urbanization, and rising disposable income levels in developing countries —are driving the exponentially growing demand for cooling services in many developing countries, which is associated with a projected rapid increase in cooling-related energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (associated with both the GHG-intensity of electricity grids and refrigerants in cooling equipment). This, in turn, puts pressure on already strained energy systems and hampers efforts to curb climate change.

graph depicting integrated approaches for sustainable cooling solutions

ESMAP's Response

ESMAP’s Efficient and Clean Cooling program helps address key sustainable development challenges of providing access to cooling while minimizing negative climate impacts, with the aim of accelerating the uptake of sustainable cooling solutions across sectors (e.g., buildings, healthcare, agriculture, and fisheries). The initiative seeks to help countries develop the necessary market infrastructure, financing mechanisms, and policies and regulations to deploy sustainable cooling at scale, focusing on space cooling and green/cool surfaces (including passive cooling strategies in the built environment, cooling equipment and systems; building automation and controls, as well as solar and vegetative roofs and walls ); refrigeration, cold chains and logistics (including refrigeration, storage and distribution activities), as well as cooling needs in transport, and mitigation of urban heat island effects.

The initiative provides technical assistance to support the inclusion of efficient, clean cooling in World Bank Group policy dialogues, including in the context of countries’ climate change Nationally Determined Contributions and sectoral strategies, investment projects, and countries’ responses to the COVID-19 crisis. The Efficient, Clean Cooling program also generates knowledge and facilitates knowledge exchanges to further expand the reach of the sustainable cooling agenda, and actively engages in efforts to mobilize additional financing to support the scale-up of affordable sustainable cooling solutions.

Another important area of focus is the collaboration with public, private, non-governmental, and philanthropic partners to help raise awareness around efficient, clean cooling opportunities in emerging markets.

The Efficient, Clean Cooling Initiative was established in 2019 thanks to an initial US$3 million grant to ESMAP from the Clean Cooling Collaborative (formerly the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program K-CEP), a philanthropic initiative housed within the ClimateWorks Foundation, focused on super-efficient refrigeration and space cooling equipment, climate-friendly refrigerants, passive cooling, and integrated solutions that cool people and the planet.

Cooling Facility: Environmental and Social Sustainability Framework.

World Bank and ESMAP are developing a Cooling Facility to channel concessional climate finance from the Green Climate Fund to co-finance IBRD- and IDA-financed operations in 9 countries (Bangladesh, El Salvador, Kenya, Malawi, North Macedonia, Panama, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia, and Sri Lanka), helping address the key sustainable development challenge of providing access to cooling while minimizing negative climate impacts, which will provide pioneering examples for mitigation and adaptation activities related to cooling in different contexts.