Northwest heat wave demonstrates world's growing cooling needs

Dean Rachel Kyte shares cooling strategies that can alleviate the demand on power grids across the nation in Axios.
Rachel Kyte

What we're watching: How much of the world's growing global cooling needs will be met with highly efficient units and buildings, use of heat pumps, low-impact coolants, and systems plugged into grids with high amounts of zero-carbon power.

  • A separate IEA report last month, which models a global energy system that achieves "net-zero" emissions by 2050, finds it's possible to massively expand cooling in an emissions-friendly way.
  • In that scenario, the number of air conditioning units in emerging and developing economies specifically rises by 650 million by 2030 and another 2 billion by 2050.
  • But under their hugely ambitious model — not a prediction! — a basket of clean technologies nonetheless helps to cut CO2 emissions from the world's buildings by 95% by 2050.

Of note: "The answers to cooling go beyond air conditioning. Building design, city design, cooling strategies all have to work to ensure the A/C doesn’t have to work so hard," Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, told Axios.

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