Sustainable cooling in a warming world

For decades, cooling strategies have relied heavily on air conditioning, but this approach is increasingly strained by rising temperatures and growing energy demand.

The second edition of UNEP’s Global Cooling Watch Report takes a deep dive into one of the decade’s most urgent challenges: surging heat, soaring cooling demand, and stark inequalities in access.

For decades, European policymakers have defined energy security primarily as maintaining heat during winter. But a new threat is emerging.

This article explores policy solutions aimed at achieving climate-friendly cooling. It presents international best practices in regulatory and policy development.

This report focuses on the exploration of existing low-emission cooling solutions to extreme heat through the review of international and UK evidence, with a particular focus on London in addition to 14 case studies from around the world.

The need to cool ourselves, and briefly escape the consequences of climate change, is driving more climate change. Thankfully, there are ways to break these cycles and form greener habits.

Through a multi-sector, multi-country programmatic financing mechanism, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is using the finance entrusted to it to improve the situation in developing countries by transforming the cooling sector.

Using statistical models trained on a large multi-country household survey dataset, this study projects AC adoption and energy use to mid-century at fine spatial resolution worldwide.

The Cooling Solution project showcases global resilience to climate challenges and how different communities adapt to high heat and humidity in countries most affected by climate change.

This policy brief asserts that the UK needs coordinated plans to stop homeowners resorting to emissions-creating air conditioning. Overheating is already a problem in UK homes, resulting in increasing levels of discomfort, illness and death.