Context:
Crippling heat is everywhere. June this year marked the 13th consecutive month of record-breaking temperatures and frequent heatwaves beyond 50°C. UN Secretary-General António Guterres on 25 July 2024, issued a global call to action on extreme heat: “Extreme heat amplifies inequality, inflames food insecurity, and pushes people further into poverty. We must respond by massively increasing access to low-carbon cooling; expanding passive cooling – such as natural solutions and urban design; and cleaning up cooling technologies while boosting their efficiency”.
The 2023 Global Cooling Watch Report, Keeping it Chill: How to meet cooling demands while cutting emissions – by the UNEP-led Cool Coalition – lays out sustainable measures in three areas: passive cooling, higher energy efficiency standards, and a faster phase down of climate warming refrigerants used in the cooling industry. Getting cooling right with these measures would cut at least 60 per cent off predicted 2050 sectoral emissions, take the pressure off energy grids and reduce electricity bills for end users by US$1 trillion in 2050, and enable an additional 3.5 billion people to benefit from refrigerators, air conditioners or passive cooling by 2050 (2023 Global Cooling Watch Report).
In order to build on the Global Cooling Watch Report, as well as map progress that is being made globally towards sustainable cooling through concrete data – and gaps therein – CREED has been set up as a working group with leading cooling data experts globally to work together to identify and evaluate gaps, existing resources, assumptions to enable countries to evaluate their cooling emissions and energy consumption.
Objectives:
- Bring together those working in this area
- Assimilate methodologies, converge as much as possible in terminology/nomenclature for cooling related datasets
- Collate/access assumptions/ datasets that exist at multiple levels of governance related to cooling; mapping regional/sectoral data, market based data available, as well as understanding assumptions behind the existing cooling related data globally
- Work on alignment and developing agreement on indicators and metrics for data (and proxies where data not available) that can be used to measure progress in national strategies to reach near-zero emissions from cooling by 2050 (MEPS, building codes, Kigali implementation).
Activities:
Work Package 1
To support the Global Cooling Pledge – to track quantifiable progress towards sustainable cooling with Pledge Countries, Global Watch report
Led by Ray Gluckman
Work Package 2
To draw up and regularly update an inventory of existing databases/ studies/ data, Develop a harmonized categorization of cooling subsectors, Provide countries with a potential method, assumptions and parameters to be able to assess cooling and subsector emissions, Identify gaps in data and what’s needed to fill. Country level + future scenarios
Led by Xinfang Wang and Mirka della Cava
Work Package 3
Investigate and develop proxies for estimation
Led by Omar Abdelaziz
Work Package 4
To bring colleagues working in this area together, create a forum, communicating on activities Disseminate findings and encourage countries to estimate emissions.
Led by UNEP-Cool Coalition and IIR
Contacts:
Lead: Dr Graeme Maidnment (UK Government) graeme.maidment@energysecurity.gov.uk
Co-chairs:
UNEP-Cool Coalition (unep-coolcoalition@un.org) and the International Institute of Refrigeration IIR, (s.hammami@iifiir.org)