Cooling is usually assessed through energy use and refrigerants. The July 2026 Cool Talk added a constraint that increasingly determines whether cooling can expand sustainably: water. Cooling Under Pressure: Water-Smart Solutions for Food Security and Heat Resilience brought together experts in nutrition, energy planning, engineering and policy to examine how rising cooling demand interacts with food systems, electricity networks, water availability and heat resilience.

Marisofi Giannouli, Communications Lead at the UNEP Cool Coalition, opened the session by placing cooling within wider resource and infrastructure planning. Cooling reduces food loss, protects farmer incomes and nutrition, maintains essential services and limits heat exposure. Its expansion can also increase pressure on grids and water supplies, particularly where climate vulnerability and infrastructure constraints already overlap. “The issue communities are facing at the moment is how to expand cooling without shifting the burden from heat to water, from food security to energy security,” she said.

Cooling as a sequence

In her keynote, Dr Eleni "Lenio" Myrivili, Global Chief Heat Advisor at the United Nations and the Atlantic Council's Climate Resilience Center, positioned cooling as a sequence that starts by reducing heat exposure, then meets remaining needs through passive and low-energy measures, and only afterwards deploys efficient equipment. This ordering limits the risk that rising temperatures trigger an unmanaged increase in energy demand, household costs and infrastructure pressure. Myrivili traced the arc from Beat the Heat, now joined by more than 250 cities and over 100 partners, to this year's 50@50 World Environment Day campaign. The next step, she argued, is to bring heat resilience and sustainable cooling into one single delivery agenda. "For too long, heat has been treated mainly as an emergency, while cooling has been treated mainly as a question of appliances and technology. In practice, they are part of the same systems challenge," Myrivili stressed.

The resource implications are particularly visible in food supply chains. Angshuman Siddhanta, Sustainable Cold Chain Expert at the UNEP Cool Coalition, presented evidence from UNEP’s cold-chain work on where expansion can deliver the greatest resilience gains. An estimated 14 per cent of food produced for human consumption is lost before reaching consumers, while integrated cold chains could save approximately 144 million tonnes of food annually in developing countries. Drawing on UNEP’s cooling programme in India, Siddhanta showed how cold chains reduce post-harvest losses while conserving the water, energy and labour embedded in food production. Producing one kilogramme of litchi requires around 1,800 litres of water, meaning that the loss of 100 tonnes also represents approximately 180 million litres of wasted water. “A cold chain, at the end of the day, is equal to food security, climate resilience and farmers’ prosperity,” he concluded.

Cooling demand across nutrition, energy and technology

Moderating the panel, Myrivili moved the discussion from the food saved through cold chains to the nutritional consequences when cooling is absent. Dr Beatrice Ekesa-Onyango, Lead Global Technical Specialist for Nutrition at the International Fund for Agricultural Development, explained that many of the most nutritious foods, including fruits, vegetables, fish, meat and dairy, are also highly perishable. Weak cooling infrastructure disrupts the connection between production and consumption, contributing to food loss, declining quality, seasonal and geographic scarcity, reduced farmer incomes and greater reliance on shelf-stable ultra-processed foods. “A cold gap, having a deficit in the cooling system, is a nutritional gap,” she said. Drawing on IFAD-supported work in Rwanda and Kenya, she described dairy collection centres and refrigerated transport as infrastructure that protects nutrition while connecting producers with markets. This approach is reflected in IFAD’s Nutrition Action Plan 2026–2031 and projects like the RDDP2 dairy programme supporting Rwanda’s milk value chain.

Larissa Nogueira, Team Lead for Energy Planning at the International Renewable Energy Agency, then examined how cooling’s changing load profile is represented in national energy planning. Forecasts often underestimate the seasonal and daily peaks created by rising temperatures, assuming that existing subannual demand patterns will remain stable. “That has to change,” she said. Cooling already accounts for roughly 10 per cent of global final electricity demand, while installed cooling capacity is expected to triple by 2050. Nogueira explained that bottom-up, technology-specific forecasting can distinguish flexible loads from fixed demand, allowing thermal storage, smart controls and other measures to shift consumption away from peak periods. “When cooling is integrated into energy planning from the outset, the resilience benefits extend across energy, water and food systems altogether,” she said, citing solar-powered refrigeration paired with ice-based thermal storage in Nigeria that reduced energy consumption by around 40 per cent.

Dr Muhammad Wakil Shahzad, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Chair of Advanced Energy and Sustainability at Northumbria University, addressed the water footprint of cooling technology. Cooling towers and evaporative systems can perform well on energy efficiency while consuming substantial quantities of water, making local climate and water availability central to technology selection. Shahzad called for demand reduction through building design and ventilation, followed by systems that combine efficient equipment with renewable energy, condensate recovery and greywater reuse. “There should be two parameters with every air-conditioning system: how much water is consumed and how much energy is consumed,” he said, arguing that governments should set minimum performance thresholds for both. The S2Cool project illustrates this approach by integrating renewable energy and potential greywater reuse into cooling systems for hospitals, schools and multi-storey buildings in Pakistan.

From technology to governance

The Q&A focused on how these approaches could be embedded in operations, planning and investment. Dr Ekesa-Onyango described IFAD projects that coordinate water use across irrigation, livestock and households, allowing infrastructure to serve several needs. Nogueira added that cooling also affects water demand through electricity generation, strengthening the case for planning across the full supply chain. Siddhanta brought the discussion back to cold-chain operations, highlighting rainwater harvesting, water reuse and operating protocols for packhouses, cold stores and refrigerated transport.

Financing pointed to two distinct drivers. Dr Shahzad identified data-centre operators as a source of market pressure and financing for lower-impact cooling systems because of their rapidly growing cooling requirements and water-neutrality commitments. On the other hand, Siddhanta emphasised the role of public policy in reducing investment risk. In India, he explained, subsidies, state-level strategies and defined project pipelines have helped attract capital, particularly where incentives are tied to renewable energy, efficiency, water conservation and harvesting.

Closing the session, Giannouli emphasised that cooling demand must be incorporated into energy, water, food, health and infrastructure decisions before investments lock in avoidable trade-offs. This agenda will continue at the Global Cooling Pledge Assembly in Singapore this September.