Context: National Cooling Action Plans (NCAPs) are an important tool to assist countries in identifying pathways to integrate comprehensive action to reduce energy related emissions from cooling aligned with plans related to emissions from refrigerant transition. They also offer an opportunity for a country to consider how to improve access to cooling and address additional SDGs. To date, there have been many different approaches to developing NCAPs ranging from emerging economies like China and India to small climate vulnerable countries like Trinidad and Tobago or Rwanda.

Due to budget and time constraints, a deep analysis across all cooling sectors is often limited in NCAPs produced to date, though they provide an important starting point for reflection. Also, NCAP’s to date are generally based on historical equipment trend analysis and projections but may not be able to fully capture the unmet cooling needs in the emerging economies. Additional support would enable greater breadth of cooling solutions, capturing potential synergies from focusing on multiple sectors at once; and offer an opportunity to integrate the (often overlooked) unmet cooling demand in the NCAP with a particular emphasis on access to cooling, drawing from the recently launched SEforALL cooling needs assessment and upcoming solutions tool.

Objective: Draw upon the experience and knowledge of organisations and countries that have been working on NCAPs to chart a holistic but modular Methodology for the development of NCAPs that cover cooling comprehensively, including various sectors and end-uses, and both met and unmet cooling needs.

The NCAP Methodology has two elements: An overarching Development Process that lays out the sequence of activities involved, including guidelines, good practices, and available resources where applicable, and a Data Assessment Framework that gives an in-depth view into the data gathering and analysis as a key component of the Development Process The process incorporates relevant parameters from the SEforALL needs assessment and the upcoming solutions tool. This will ensure that the NCAP methodology promotes access to cooling while avoiding locking in emissions through low efficiency or high GWP mechanical cooling.

Contacts:

– Lead: Mirka della Cava, Head of Policies, Standards & Programs, Clean Cooling Collaborative (formerly K-CEP), mirka.dellacava@climateworks.org

– Co-Facilitator: Lily Riahi, Cool Coalition Secretariat, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), lily.riahi@un.org

– Co-Facilitator: Marco Duran, Cool Coalition Secretariat, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), marco.duran@un.org

Download the working group’s concept note here