Cooling underpins the ability of societies to function effectively and reduce wastage by keeping food, medicines, and vaccines at the right temperature, while enhancing people’s productivity and comfort at home, school, and work in hot and humid climates and during periods of intense summer heat in more temperate climates. It also helps us stay connected online by cooling data centres. These services have become even more critical during the pandemic.
By actively incorporating efficient, climate‐friendly cooling across sectors in their stimulus packages, countries can increase their ability to weather the pandemic storms, but deliver on the Paris Agreement, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the Kigali Amendment.
This brief presents how – in multiple critical economic sectors or systems (buildings, appliances, urban environments, cold chains, and R&D) – national governments can reorient public policy and include cooling in their recovery packages. This would support efforts to halt the pandemic, spur economic recovery, create and protect jobs for vulnerable populations, help strengthen resilience, and accelerate the transition to efficient, climate‐friendly cooling technologies and solutions.