No one understands the importance of hedging more than business leaders. A hedge is an investment tactic that is deployed to mitigate possible and potential loss in other investment practices. The Global Cooling Pledge is such a hedge that offers the cooling business, engaged in refrigeration and air conditioning, a practical edge in addressing the climate crisis.

The mind-boggling conundrum of global warming and air conditioning can be stated in simple term: Planetary global warming needs air conditioning, which in turn, warms the planet!

Interestingly , Lee Kuan Yew, the founder and the first prime minister of modern Singapore once stated: “Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilisation by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning, you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk.” He went on to say: “The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency.”

Lee Kuan Yew died in March 2015, 10 months before the Paris Climate Agreement was signed. Little did he know that in the future, energy efficiency of air conditioners would matter as much as the efficiency of public servants!

“Global heating is a cold, hard fact.” That’s how the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on January 10, 2025. Based on six international datasets, it confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year on record. Known to issue Press statements in rather dry language with a flood of weather statistics, this time around, the WMO issued the following statement: “Global heating is cold, hard fact. Climate history is playing out before our eyes. We have had not just one or two record-breaking years but a full ten-year series.” That was a telling statement, if any.

More cooling needs more energy, more energy produces more greenhouse gases, more greenhouse gases result in higher temperature on Earth. Higher temperature needs more cooling for human activities like food preservation, production of medicines, health, comfort and for data centre security for digital technologies, which themselves are showing a phenomenal rise every year. This vicious cycle in cooling is the mega challenge to address what the WMO stated as a ‘cold and hard’ fact. Clearly, 2024 ended by making it very cold and clear that human developmental activities have disrupted the carbon cycle on our planet.

Seventy-five per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions come from energy generation. Part of that energy is needed for human development, which in turn needs cooling operations. The word ‘space cooling’, mainly used by the International Energy Agency (IEA), interestingly enough has nothing to do with ‘space’ applications in the sky, but space within buildings like residences, factories and hospitals which need to be cooled. With several extreme heat events and record high temperatures the world over since the 1800s, much of the global population, mainly in Africa, Middle East and Asia, is at high risk of heat stress, adversely affecting labour productivity, and human physical and mental health.

Growing populations and ever increasing global warming have led to a continuous rise in demand for air conditioning and refrigeration, resulting in higher greenhouse gas emissions. Energy consumption for space cooling has tripled since 1990, though much of the population in poor countries do not have access to air conditioning and refrigeration due to accessibility and affordability. This has left many people deprived of cooling, thereby creating ‘cool-inequity’. Sadly, the term ‘sustainable cooling’ does not internalise such social and just dimensions of cooling.

About 10-15% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from refrigeration and cooling (RAC) applications. The sources of emissions from the RAC sector are two: Direct emissions resulting from the leakages and end-of-life disposal of the refrigerants that have Global Warming Potential (GWP), and indirect emissions arising out of use of energy for the compressors and allied accessories for refrigeration or air conditioning equipment. Nearly 70% of emissions are indirect, and the remaining are from refrigerant leakages and their open disposal.

The vicious circle of emissions from the RAC sector can be greatly disrupted by transitioning away from highly climate-damaging HCFC and HFC refrigerants to low and, then, zero-GWP refrigerants, and moving towards super energy efficient and then clean-energy RAC appliances. Fortunately, the RAC business is on the threshold of realisation that there are, along with climate benefits, significant economic benefits to enhance the energy efficiency and use of clean energy.

However, the time to act is now. During COP28, in the year 2023 in Dubai, under the Presidency of the UAE, all countries that attended agreed to double energy efficiency and triple renewable energy use. A significant outcome of COP28 was the Global Cooling Pledge, joined by 63 countries, including Canada, Kenya, the UAE and the United States. The Pledge marks the world’s first collective focus on direct and indirect emissions from cooling, which includes refrigeration for food and medicine and air conditioning. The Pledge commits countries to reduce by 2050 their cooling-related emissions by at least 68% compared to 2022 levels, along with a suite of other targets, including establishing minimum energy performance standards by 2030.

The goals of the Global Cooling Pledge can be achieved by the RAC Industry, which has been a beacon of successful transformation right from the 1990s, when the Montreal Protocol sounded a clarion call. No one reacted more positively, and with more commitment, than the RAC industry. I believe it can once again rise to the call issued by the Pledge through phase down and then phase out of HFCs; phase out of HCFCs; promoting use of natural and near-zero-GWP refrigerants; monitoring energy efficiency of the RAC appliances through digital dashboards and through the use of AI technologies; pledging not to dump outdated appliances to poor countries; creating a fund of its own to help poor countries to enhance energy efficiency and effective monitoring of appliances; tying up with universities to promote the research, development and piloting of actions that achieve use of clean energy in RAC appliances, and through promoting passive, traditional and natural cooling practices that were followed in Asian and Middle Eastern countries for centuries in the past.

CPI Industry and its flagship magazine, Climate Control Middle East, along with Green TERRE Foundation would aim to develop this Editorial Campaign to achieve the goals of The Pledge and invite commitments from industry partners to mitigate RAC-related emissions as per well-meaning targets. The success stories; research papers; and Pledge-related events, including awards and conferences, that would be held in 2025 would find a place in this magazine during the course of the year, and important points extracted from the Campaign would be presented during COP30, in Brazil.

Building a better future for RAC through disruptive changes in behaviour would still validate the statement by the late Lee Kuan Yew that the most important invention of the 20th century was indeed the air conditioner! As temperatures and emissions rise, let the commitment of the RAC industry to The Pledge also rise for a world featuring sustainable and just cooling.