May 1, 2025
This event featured four speakers: Alan Miller, Managing Director, CoolPact Capital; Lowell Randall, Senior Vice-President, Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA); Cara Martin, CEO, OTS R&D; and Selcuk Tanatar, Principal Operations Officer, TechEmerge, International Finance Corporation.
In his opening remarks, Miller reviewed the rising temperatures driving the rapidly increasing need for sustainable cooling, particularly in developing economies. The dominant source of growth is in developing countries, where cooling contributes to most sustainable development goals but also threatens grid reliability. Because cooling is incorporated in many sectors – buildings, agriculture, health, transportation, infrastructure and manufacturing – solutions are necessarily diverse and country specific. The negative consequences include rising greenhouse gas emissions, now about 7% of global emissions but increasing to over 16% if current trends continue. The result: enormous demand for additional sources of power in developing country energy systems, many already unreliable. While the challenges are numerous, so are the market opportunities, estimated to be US$600 billion a year in emerging markets in a recent report by the International Finance Corporation, Cooler Finance.
Lowell Randel introduced the Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA), an organization of more than 1100 companies in 92 countries with multiple international offices. Since 2002, the Alliance has completed more than 120 projects in over 65 countries promoting more efficient and effective cold chains through training, education, and feasibility studies. In addition to the diverse activities of the Alliance, GCCA operates a foundation dedicated to the proper handling and storage of perishable products. Randel highlighted the critical shift from synthetic refrigerants (HFCs/HFOs) to natural alternatives like ammonia and CO2, stressing the urgent need for enhanced information dissemination and education globally about refrigerants.
Cara Martin provided significant background on cooling technology issues from her position as CEO of an engineering consulting firm that provides research and development support for HVAC and refrigeration systems. She explained that the industry is rather slow moving with respect to innovation consistent with the philosophy “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” The result, she noted, is that “what got us to where we are today won’t get us to where we need to be tomorrow.” She emphasized the significance of evaluating cooling solutions based on lifetime use and performance, stressing that a comprehensive lifecycle assessment that includes consumer behavior and maintenance over time is essential to truly gauge the energy impact and sustainability of cooling technologies.
Selçuk Tanatar described lessons from the recently concluded IFC TechEmerge sustainable cooling program, which provided funding for proof of concept for dozens of early-stage innovative cooling solutions in emerging markets. He described key findings from the IFC program including diverse cooling opportunities across manufacturing sectors and the value of partnerships addressing skill gaps and regulatory challenges.
Insights from IFC’s regional projects included:
– Mexico & Colombia: Climate-smart cooling solutions in retail, pharma, agriculture, education, logistics, and space cooling.
– Nigeria and broader Africa: Improved transport, storage, and monitoring of perishables and pharmaceuticals.
– India & South Asia: Climate-smart cooling solutions for hospitality, Enhanced retail cold chains to improve transport, storage, and monitoring of perishables.
– Global: Technology advancements and feasibility studies, such as capturing waste cold energy from LNG terminals.
Tanatar concluded with the observation that financing needs and gaps for cooling are much higher than for other climate change related technologies. He also noted that marginal improvements will not be sufficient to meet the need – “leapfrog” technologies must be found.