In this segment, existing cooling gaps and progress on policy action in the region were reviewed, with an emphasis on National Cooling Action Plans in service of the Kigali Amendment, Paris Agreement, and SDGs. This included a deep dive on the model Methodology for National Cooling Action Plans, recently completed by the Cool Coalition, as a tool to promote sustainable cooling in a holistic manner across a country. Download the presentation
Join the Cool Coalition
The Cool Coalition has more than 120 partners driving change in the cooling sector and is organised around five stakeholder clusters which include national governments and intergovernmental initiatives, cities, businesses, finance, and civil society. To join, stakeholders are requested to sign the Cool Coalition endorsement form indicating in which cluster they would like to participate.
Submit an Energy Compact
Energy Compacts are voluntary commitments with the specific actions to advance progress on SDG7 and net-zero emissions. Provide details of your plans and support needs to UN-Energy.
Partner and communicate
Reach out to the Cool Coalition, SEforALL, or the Clean Cooling Collaborative for help identifying the right partners for your goals. Learn about technical assistance, training, and other capacity-building opportunities.
Share stories of success through the #ThisIsCool campaign.
While more than 780 million people worldwide do not have access to reliable electricity, the FAO has estimated that around 37 percent of food products in Sub-Saharan Africa are lost between harvest and consumption due to inadequate conservation and storage. Meanwhile, the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has highlighted the need for cold chains and cooling systems powered by reliable and sustainable energy. Despite many new energy policies and efforts on energy access for remote areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, the necessary infrastructure for cold storage for vaccines and other medical goods remains insufficient in many of these areas. The fact that solar energy is abundant in Sub-Saharan Africa led the Bi-Solar Tech Fridge team to create solar-powered cold storage units using one compressor for multiple applications, including pre-cooling, cold storage and charging a cold storage unit.
The team behind the Bi-Solar Tech Fridge was able to set up a remarkably high-impact project that contributes to eight of the 17 SDGs. Technically, the units make use of solar power and non-toxic refrigerants, achieving thermal conversion efficiency of 70 percent and PV conversion efficiency of 15 percent, with overall device efficiency of about 45 percent. By using solar energy, the solution can enable reliable access to cooling for vaccines and medical goods in off-grid settings, and at scale the solution could store over 360,000 vaccine doses in rural areas.
When applied to the agriculture cold chain, these systems can support meaningful benefits for community nutrition by reducing energy needs for food storage and supplying any excess energy to power lighting or charge phones. To produce the units, the team recycles old refrigerator appliances and refurbishes them. This helps to create jobs in particular for women and young people, who have traditionally been involved in collecting the materials for manufacturing. Already, the project has created 15 jobs and the company hopes to employ over 135 people at scale.
As a result of these efforts, the Bi-Solar Tech Fridge technology was the runner up out of 130 teams competing in the innovation competition of the SEforALL Youth Summit in February 2021