On World Ozone Day in 2019, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres released a message calling upon countriesto develop National Cooling Action Plans (NCAPs) to deliver efficient and sustainable cooling and bring essentiallife‐preserving services like vaccines and safe food to all people while driving climate action.
Many countries are developing National Cooling Actions Plans (NCAPs) to coordinate action on energy efficiency and the HFC phase down, and to proactively address their growing cooling needs while reducing the climate impact of cooling practices, improving access to cooling and addressing several Sustainable Development Goals. NCAP helps countries to identify synergies and deliver against three internationally agreed goals simultaneously – the Paris Climate Agreement, Sustainable Development Goals, and Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol – while pursuing national priorities and socioeconomic benefits.
Several of these NCAP pioneers joined forces within the framework of the Cool Coalition to create a NCAP Methodology that covers cooling comprehensively, including all relevant sectors and end-uses (space cooling in buildings, mobile AC, cold-chain and refrigeration), and considers access to cooling for all. The NCAP Methodologyis a uniform guide map for NCAP development that can be readily adapted to fit a country’s specific context andnational priorities. It has two distinct elements: an overarching NCAP Development Methodology that lays out the sequence of activities involved, including guidelines, good practices, and available resources where applicable, and NCAP Data Assessment Frameworks which give in-depth view into the data gathering and analysis.
The Methodology was developed by Alliance for Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE) under the leadership of CoolCoalition, UN ESCAP, and K-CEP together with members of the NCAP Working Group – UNDP, UNEP-U4E, Energy Foundation China, World Bank Group, GiZ, CLASP, Birmingham University, SEforALL. AEEE was able to bring in the experience from India’s Cooling Action Plan as a major building block of this workbecause of its comprehensive approach and coverage of all sectors. Other important building blocks included SEforALL’s needs assessment and the 29 NCAPs developed by members of the Cool Coalition NCAP Working Group facilitated by K-CEP.
In the context of the 2021 Africa Climate Week Virtual Thematic Sessions, UNEP’s United for Efficiency and the Cool Coalition, came together with partners to launch this comprehensive methodology in Africa and build capacity among national policymakers and stakeholders on developing and implementing National Cooling Action Plans in this region. The event’s recording and presentations will be available soon.