Carbon emissions from cooling solutions such as refrigeration and air conditioning units continue to skyrocket across the globe. This climate threat was recently heightened by the UNEP-led Global Cooling Watch Report at the Climate Change Conference (COP28) held in Dubai.
And as urbanization and global-warming-induced temperature rise continue to spike up, access to energy-efficient and sustainable cooling technologies is expected to become more critical.
In order to reduce carbon emissions caused by cooling methods and mitigate climate risks, the Global Cooling Pledge has been announced at COP28. The cooling pledge aims to seek international cooperation and efforts from countries to adopt energy-efficient cooling methods and climate-friendly approaches while providing sustainable cooling to vulnerable areas.
The situation is particularly challenging for developing nations like Asia and Africa where a population of almost 1.2 billion people still don’t have accessible and reliable cooling technologies.
According to the Global Cooling Watch Report, there are three main areas that we need to cover if we want to transition from harmful cooling technologies to sustainable options:
- Using Passive cooling
- Adopting high-standard energy-efficient solutions
- Faster phase-down of warming refrigerants
The Global Cooling Pledge has been signed by more than 63 countries including the United Nations and the United Kingdom. The host of COP28, United Arab Emirates has also signed the pledge to minimize climate changes due to cooling technologies.
All of the countries who have decided to show their participation in this move have committed to employing the above solutions to reduce carbon emissions by 68% at the end of 2050.
The UNEP report has suggested that introducing and implementing recommendations can reduce carbon emission by 3.8 billion metric tons. In addition to this, it will also cut down power costs and power generation investment requirement totaling to a drastic amount of $22 trillion.
