WWF
Summary
As temperatures continue to rise and heatwaves become more severe and frequent, the world will need to do more to keep cool. There are ways to cool our homes and businesses without further fuelling the climate crisis, writes Richard Scotney, WWF Global Energy Efficiency Lead.
Growing temperatures, along with rising incomes will see further increasing demand for electricity for air conditioning. In Singapore, cooling is already responsible for 30% of electricity use, according to a recent WWF-Singapore report. Low rates of air conditioning use by households in Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia mean 260m new ACs are expected to be installed in the region by 2014, compared to less than 50m today. In India, emissions from building cooling are expected to grow sevenfold by 2050 compared to 2017.
However, there are solutions to ensure people have access to cooling, but without dramatically increasing the level of emissions.
Flexible cooling
Expanding into new flexible cooling technologies will also be important. Air conditioning in certain tropical countries is now the main source of peak energy demand. A recent report from WWF-Singapore and the Carbon Trust highlighted the importance of flexible clean cooling solutions for the energy transition – including district cooling, control systems for demand-side response management, Phase change materials for short-medium duration storage capacity and Cryogenic energy storage systems for long duration storage capacity.
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