Experts from UK and India put their heads together in London to work out sustainable cooling solutions for mankind even as planet getting only more heated up with existing cooling technologies and systems.
The University of Birmingham that hosted The Clean Cold Congress on April 24-25, also brought out the report 'Promoting Clean and Energy Efficient Cold Chains in India' that calls for harness smart tech to make the cold chains cooler than they are now.
The two-day conference held in collaboration with the World Bank saw participation from Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), India Institute, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare, Birmingham Energy Institute, Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.
The experts discussed possible solutions for providing access to sustainable cooling for all in the shortest possible time.
Honorary Professor at Birmingham Energy Institute Pawanexh Kohli, UK Foreign Secretary's Special Representative for Climate Change Sir David King and Ashok Sarkar from World Bank Climate discussed how to link people's needs and their climate concerns with government policymaking.
They set out to establish how much cooling is required globally, review existing solutions and discuss how to overcome the current barriers to achieve sustainable cooling for all.
Sharing the importance of sustainable energy resources in India, Martina Bosi from the World Bank pointed out to the window of opportunity in the fact that 70% of the projected buildings in India by 2030 have not yet been built.
The Clean Cold Congress is a global event around sustainable, accessible cooling for all who need it, without over-heating the planet. Representatives from governments, manufacturers, research and development organisations take part in it.
With populations and incomes growing, urbanisation continuing and climate change causing rising temperatures, the world will need to provide far more cooling. Between now and 2050, it is estimated that 19 pieces of cooling equipment (such as room-size AC units, refrigerators and industrial size chillers) will be deployed every second.
Despite this massive increase in cooling provision, access to cooling for all people that need it will still not be a reality, and the poorest in many hot countries will feel the impact.
How the world meets this challenge and provides cooling services to a growing middle class and to the vulnerable poor in the coming decades will have important ramifications for our climate: without innovations and targeted interventions the energy demand for cooling could increase more than five times by 2050 – and fast growing direct and indirect GHG emissions associated with cooling equipment can easily outpace all our attempts to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement and halt global warming.
Clean cold is about how do we meet the urgent global need for cooling without over-heating the planet. This is now at the heart of the climate and development debate, which concerns many of the world’s international development and environmental agencies.