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.
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.