COP29 Buildings and Cooling Pavilion

Financing the Adoption of Passive Cooling Strategies for a Cooler Future

Event description

Ensuring comfortable, cooled indoor temperatures in buildings is indispensable to our healthy dwelling. However, higher energy consumption for space cooling leads to higher GHG emissions. Since 2000, energy demand for space cooling has risen at an average of about 4% per year, and the number of residential units in the cooling operation has tripled, reaching more than 1.5 billion in 2022 (IEA, 2022). To address this, passive cooling – design/construction/operation strategies to leverage natural energy to keep a space cool while reducing the dependence on mechanical cooling a practice of using non-mechanical technology, design elements, and nature-based solutions to keep a space cool without using energy – is a fundamental solution. Passive cooling measures can curb the growth in demand for cooling capacity in 2050 by 24 per cent, and accelerating the transition to sustainable cooling will help developing economy consumers spend $6.4 trillion less by 2050  (UNEP Global Cooling Watch Report, 2023).

The IFC and UNEP-led Cool Coalition joint report, Cooler Finance: Mobilizing Investment for the Developing World’s Sustainable Cooling Needs, identifies numerous private investment opportunities across different segments of the cooling market, including space cooling, refrigeration, cold chains, and transport. Critically, it also highlights the need to increase the adoption of passive cooling strategies. The market for passive cooling strategies in developing economies for new buildings and retrofitting, at approximately $30 billion, is already significant. However, it needs to expand dramatically to deliver near-zero emissions by 2050, through scaled-up adoption and enforcement of building energy codes.

In this event, prominent speakers will be invited and introduce their experiences and evidence-based knowledge from both international and country-level perspectives, especially highlighting the current effort in the global south. Representatives from India, Vietnam, and Cambodia, among others, will provide insights into how they are adopting passive cooling technologies, and address the financial challenges to adopting sustainable cooling solutions in their respective developing countries.