Cities are running into the same cooling problem from different directions: rising heat, rising demand, constrained grids, and building-by-building systems that are no longer fit for dense urban growth. Together, these pressures are pushing district cooling into the mainstream as a standardised infrastructure option for urban energy planning, capable of aggregating demand, reducing peak loads and supporting more efficient growth. The April 2026 Cool Talk convened global leaders in district cooling to examine the policy signals, utility models, financing structures and planning decisions needed to scale it.

Opening the session, Rob Thornton, President and CEO of the International District Energy Association (IDEA), set out the scale case for district cooling, pointing to a global market projected to grow from around USD 30 billion in 2024 to USD 55 billion by 2033, with Dubai, Singapore, Paris and Stockholm showing how district cooling can be adapted to different urban and climate contexts. Thornton highlighted Dubai’s scale, with 1.7 million refrigeration tons installed, 2 million refrigeration tons contracted, and 90 plant rooms in operation. “The three legs of the stool are policy and regulatory frameworks, finance, and the role of the city,” Thornton noted, stressing that scaling district cooling depends on integrating it into urban systems as a default standard and creating the market mechanisms that allow it to accelerate.

IDEA is hosting its 117th Annual Conference and Trade Show from 23 to 26 June in Ottawa under the theme “Connecting Networks.” Second Vice Chair Meghan Riesterer moderated the panel discussion, focusing on city operations and customer value. Drawing on her experience with the Centrio Chicago district cooling system, the largest carbon-zero district cooling system in the United States, Riesterer described district cooling as “the strategic liberation of our cities,” pointing to its ability to reclaim prime real estate from noisy chillers, create rooftop parks and amenities, and decouple urban growth from grid instability. In Chicago, that model uses North America’s largest ice battery and ultra-filtered water from the Chicago River to cool more than 50 million square feet while saving 250 million gallons of freshwater annually.

Scaling markets and systems

Opening the panel discussion, H.E. Ahmad Bin Shafar, CEO of Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation PJSC (Empower), explained how Dubai has managed to turn district cooling from a building service into a utility business. Established in 2003 by royal decree, Empower has grown from an initial temporary capacity of 5,400 refrigeration tons in 2004 to become the world’s largest district cooling services provider, serving approximately 160,000 customers with a connected cooling capacity of 1.7 million refrigeration tons across nearly 1,800 buildings spanning the residential, commercial, hospitality, health, education, entertainment, and airport sectors. The model depends on government backing, long-term service continuity, submetering, direct customer relationships, and a clear value proposition for developers and end users. “We strongly believe that we can replicate the Dubai model elsewhere, factoring in cost, construction conditions, community acceptance, government policy and affordability as decisive factors,” remarked Bin Shafar.

From Dubai’s high-cooling-demand model, Oddgeir Gudmundsson, District Energy Solutions Director at Danfoss, shifted the discussion to regions where cooling is becoming a newer infrastructure need. “District cooling systems are not necessarily defined by the climate,” he said, “but by their ability to leverage local conditions and integrate with the surrounding energy system.” Gudmundsson pointed to Barcelona, where waste cold from LNG regasification can be captured instead of lost; Paris, where the Seine can serve as a heat sink; Copenhagen, where cooling can be linked to renewable power, free cooling from the sea, heat pumps and district heating; and Stockholm, where one of the world’s largest district cooling systems operates in a Nordic climate. In all cases, the technical lesson is that the network and the buildings must be designed together with accurate demand data, avoidance of oversized chillers, modulating controls for maintenance of high temperature differences between supply and return. Holistic approach is the key enabler for efficient system operation.

As far as emerging economies go, Sudheer Perla, Senior Advisor for District Cooling at the UNEP Cool Coalition, used India to show how quickly cooling is becoming a grid, policy and market-design issue. The country’s record peak power demand reached 256 GW in April 2026, with around 75 GW already going to cooling and more than 70% of cooling demand currently powered by coal. Perla pointed to clear market appetite, noting that India already has 73 operational district cooling projects, mostly in captive campus models across offices, hotels, hospitals, IT parks and mixed-use developments. “The opportunity now is to move from captive systems to merchant cooling utilities that can serve multiple buildings across urban districts,” said Perla. With the right regulatory framework, India could reach around 4.8 million refrigeration tons of district cooling by 2035, mobilising an estimated USD 7.2 billion in investment and cutting more than 60 million tonnes of CO₂.

Rounding out the panel, Alexander Sharabaroff, Senior Energy Specialist at the World Bank, focused on the financing barriers that still prevent district cooling from scaling in new markets, even where the technical case is strong. He pointed to high upfront capital costs, demand uncertainty, load risk, limited project-preparation funding, fragmented stakeholder coordination, and the lack of clear policy or institutional ownership as the main obstacles to bankability. “Greenfield cities remain one of the largest missed opportunities,” he argued, noting that “district cooling is best integrated before urban districts are built, yet often loses out to cheaper, faster split-system procurement.” Sharabaroff also highlighted the World Bank Group’s ability to support clients through public-sector lending, IFC private-sector finance and MIGA guarantees, alongside programmes such as India’s AHEAD initiative, which includes district cooling feasibility work as part of a broader energy-efficiency investment package.

Operational realities

The Q&A session focused on the operational details that can make or break district cooling projects, including how systems manage river-temperature limits, when alternative heat-rejection methods are needed, how treated sewage effluent and river water can reduce pressure on potable water supplies, and why demand must be right-sized before investment decisions are made. Speakers also stressed that connecting existing buildings depends on a clear commercial value proposition, from reducing equipment burden and operating risk to improving resilience and freeing usable space.

Overall, the webinar showed that district cooling is technically mature and commercially active, but its next phase will be decided less by equipment choices than by market design. The cities that move fastest will be those that identify high-density cooling zones, aggregate demand, secure anchor customers, and integrate chilled water into urban energy planning before inefficient building-level systems lock in the next generation of cooling demand.

The recording and presentations are available here.