Chilling Prospects: Tracking Sustainable Cooling for All 2022
Chilling Prospects: Tracking Sustainable Cooling for All 2022 shines a light on the cooling access challenges faced today and how they may change by 2030. It shows that the risks to the most vulnerable from extreme heat are growing because of a lack of access to sustainable cooling. People will remain at high risk if we fail to meet key SDGs that enable access to cooling: universal electrification and eradicating extreme poverty.
Chapter 1: Global access to cooling gaps and 2030 forecast
In 2022, across 54 high-impact countries and high-temperature regions of 22 countries not considered high-impact, 1.2 billion rural and urban poor are at high risk because they lack access to cooling - with 1.17 billion of them living in high-impact countries that need support. This represents an increase of more than 28 million people compared to 2021, driven by rising urban poor numbers. The lower-middle income population at medium risk increased from 2.37 billion in 2021 to 2.47 billion in 2022, including an increase of 109.3 million among the high-impact countries.
This chapter also explores 2030 projections for cooling access risks. It shows that a current trends scenario will still leave 1.22 billion at high risk in 2030. If SDG 7.1 and SDG 1.1. are achieved, the population at high risk would reduce by 36 percent, to 745 million in 2030, over 90 percent of which would be concentrated among the urban poor, while the rural poor population would fall to below 50 million. Explore the data