Chilling Prospects: Tracking Sustainable Cooling for All 2022
Research
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
This report is part of the series:
Chilling Prospects
Chapter 2: Sectoral data across key cooling needs
Access to sustainable cooling underpins the delivery of important components of Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, and 13, among others. This chapter provides an update on new data across key cooling needs of Food, Nutrition, and Agriculture, Health Services, and Human Comfort and Safety, and profiles sustainable cooling solutions that contribute to the SDGs.
For example, previous estimates for annual mortality due to extreme heat were 12,000 people annually. New research for The Lancet has shown that the scale of the challenge is already much larger, with extreme heat causing the deaths of 356,000 people in 2019 alone. [1]
This chapter also includes a special deep dive on cities, with a framework to measure and manage the impacts of urban heat. This includes a data deep-dive on land-use changes in the largest cities among the Critical 9 countries for access to cooling, using interactive, GIS data. Explore the data
Chapter 3: Tracking the enabling environment for sustainable cooling
Delivering enhanced access to sustainable solutions depends on a broad variety of enabling factors, with this section of Chilling Prospects focusing on three: Sustainable Cooling Policy Progress; Sustainable Cooling Financial Flows; and Sustainable Cooling Community of Practice.
Policy progress on sustainable cooling has made important progress since the Kigali Amendment, but efforts need to be sustained. The report assesses current policy among the Critical 9 countries for (i) access to cooling; (ii) energy efficiency for ACs, fans, refrigerators, and buildings and (iii) climate change policies for cooling.
Similarly, finance has begun to flow, and 2021 marked the year where dedicated access to cooling finance mobilized a significant amount of international climate finance through the approval of the World Bank Cooling Facility, with USD 157 million in direct GCF financing leveraging USD 722 million in World Bank co-financing.
Underpinning this is a growing community of practice that is displaying the benefits of collaboration and knowledge-sharing, given limited resources and complex problems, with new partnerships, awareness raising, and information sharing among and outside this community remaining a key need. Explore the data
Chapter 4: Reflecting on five years of the Kigali Amendment - Cooling for All partner stories
The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol offered a historic opportunity to link its implementation with the improvement of energy efficiency in active cooling technologies and to use holistic strategies to deliver on the cooling needs of vulnerable populations while reducing the overall energy demand needed for cooling.
Since 2016, a growing number of initiatives have put these words to action, in support of the Kigali Amendment, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and the Sustainable Development Goals. This chapter profiles several interventions in action across the themes of Global Voices; Food, Nutrition, and Agriculture; Health Services; Human Comfort and Safety; Finance; and Regional Perspectives.
Each story provides insight on the impact of their work, as well as a vision for success in 2025, halfway through the decade of action for the Sustainable Development Goals and a critical milestone for the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Explore the stories
We will publish the PDF version of this report by mid-July.
Notes and references
Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, China, Congo, Rep., Cote d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini, Gambia, The; Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Lao PDR, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Uganda, Vietnam, Yemen
The Critical 9 are the countries with the largest number of people at high risk: India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Mozambique, Sudan, Brazil
The 22 countries with high-temperature regions: Afghanistan, Belize, Bhutan, Central African Republic, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Guatemala, Honduras, Jordan, Lebanon, Mexico, Nepal, Sierra Leone, West Bank and Gaza, Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Venezuela RB
[1] Burkart, et al, Health in a World of Extreme Heat, The Lancet Vol 398, August 2021. Link.
