This summer, I was visiting
family in England.
There was a heat wave.
It was hot, and it was humid.
There was very little breeze.
The temperature was hovering
around 29 degrees centigrade
for days on end,
and the nights were not much better.
In our little bungalow,
there was nowhere to get cool.
We had one fan moving hot air around.
I was worried for my mom.
Heat can send your heart rate
all the way up.
The only place to get cool,
the only relief,
was at the supermarket in town,
standing in front of the chiller cabinets.
In 2021, extreme heat has captured
the headlines on every continent.
And globally in July,
surface temperatures were the highest
recorded since records began in 1880.
The problem is that the way
we cool things down
is heating the planet even more.
Today’s air-conditioning
is energy inefficient,
depends on polluting refrigerants
such as hydrofluorocarbons
and many traditional
cooling technologies waste heat.
I’m sure you’ve had that experience
of walking in an alley
behind a convenience store
and feeling that blast
of hot air on your face
coming from the chillers inside.
And the demand for cooling is going up.
The International Energy Agency
estimates that by 2050,
today’s two billion air conditioners
will have multiplied
to more than 5.5 billion,
and that by 2030,
electricity demand for cooling buildings
could jump by 50 percent.
And think about this:
most households in hot countries
have not bought their first
air conditioner yet.
I’ve worked on sustainable energy
for many years in different ways;
on energy access in the Sahel,
to cold chains in East Africa,
to financing large-scale energy
infrastructure projects around the world
and to getting access to cooling
in low-income communities
in the UK and the US.
I've always focused on the twin problems
of sustainability and fairness.
I think cooling gets at the heart
of these challenges.
Why?
Well, because most wealthy
people can stay cool.
They often live in wealthy, leafy suburbs
with an air conditioner
and a generator out back,
and they have cool offices,
cool schools and hospitals.
But many people on low income
live and work in urban concrete jungles
void of green space and shade,
or live in rural areas well beyond
the cold chains needed for produce
and vaccines.
Almost a billion people live
without energy access today;
billions more live without access
to reliable energy;
and 2.3 billion can only afford
a highly inefficient
or polluting air conditioner.
These people’s quest
for sustainable energy,
for cooling,
for comfort,
for cold chain,
for a healthy diet or better health care,
can drive a virtuous circle
where we can provide cooling for everyone
without warming the planet.
Entrepreneurs with new technologies
are emerging everywhere.
Framework agreements
guiding government action are in place,
and there are big
and new commitments being made.
The solutions go well beyond
just fixing air-conditioning.
The solutions range
from city design to architecture,
from building materials to appliances,
from geoengineering to green roofs.
The solutions can be high-tech,
they can be low-tech,
and there are four areas of promise,
four areas where solutions
could be transformative
if we step up to the plate,
prioritize, regulate and invest.
We’ll go through them one by one.
First, we need to build
and design differently for cooling.
For the last 70 years or more,
air-conditioning has driven
building design.
We need to change that,
and we need to move away
from hermetically sealed concrete
and glass boxes where you can
switch on an air conditioner
but you cannot open the window.
You know it doesn’t have to be
a window rattler as a solution.
District cooling can provide
cooling solutions for building complexes
by running water through insulated pipes.
And in Denmark,
better known for its wind and its rain,
district cooling provides,
with a combination of heat pumps,
wastewater and groundwater,
cooling solutions for offices and homes.
And we can make roofs cool, too.
The race is on for
the brightest, whitest paint
that reflects 98 percent of sunlight
that hits its surface,
much better than the 80
to 90 percent we achieve today.
And if not white then green.
Green because they’re planted
with gardens and vegetables,
also contributing to the food
that has to come from urban farming.
Roofing materials matter, too.
In India, modular roofing panels
made from paper and waste wood
can reduce the temperatures
by up to 10 degrees centigrade
in the homes below.
And we can change windows, too.
In the European Union,
solar control glass is available
that provides high daylight transmission,
thermal insulation,
transparency
and low reflection.
Second, we need to make
cooling hyperefficient.
In the developed world,
if you buy a high-end
air conditioner today,
it’s probably 25 to 50 percent
more efficient
than anything you could
have bought 10 years ago.
Now we need every air conditioner
for sale everywhere
to be at least 50 percent more efficient
than the most efficient air conditioner
on the market today.
It helps if we think
of energy efficiency as our first fuel.
That’s not the priority
we give it in policy.
We need much more of our economic activity
to be covered by energy
efficiency standards
that are much tougher than today’s.
Radical efficiency
is important for heating too.
Heating accounts for most
emissions from building,
but emissions from cooling
are the fastest rising.
So we need much more synergy
between heating and cooling.
Remember the alley
behind the convenience store?
High-efficiency energy pumps
will be solutions for both.
Third,
we need our air-conditioning
to be hydrofluorocarbon or HFC-free.
In 2016, governments agreed
to phase down the production
and the consumption of polluting HFCs,
a refrigerant that accelerates
global warming.
That agreement, the Kigali Amendment,
is now ratified by 125 countries
and the European Union,
including China,
the largest producer of air-conditioning.
India,
a growing producer and a big consumer,
has agreed to follow suit.
And while not a party to the agreement --
yet --
the United States announced
in September 2021
a new regulation that would insist
that US manufacturers reduce
HFCs by 85 percent
in the next 15 years.
Now what’s interesting
is that there are existing,
emissions-free,
non-polluting technologies
on the market today,
ready to go to scale,
including membrane technologies
that can both cool and dehumidify air
without using compressors or refrigerants.
So the Kigali Amendment,
together with a ban on the exports
and imports of illegal HFCs,
could make a real difference
and grow that market fast.
And fourth, we need cold chains
for food, medicines --
especially vaccines --
for everyone.
Distributing vaccines
along a secure cold chain
to reach the most vulnerable
is essential.
Solar, nontoxic vaccine refrigerators,
cold boxes and carriers
operating on off-grid energy
are increasingly on order.
And mobile cold storage units
that run on solar convert energy into ice.
And so when the sun goes down,
that ice can be used
to keep temperatures steady and cool.
And using Bluetooth technology,
even in areas where
there is no energy access,
we can monitor all the way
along the cold chain to guarantee safety.
And using drones,
we can shorten the cold chain.
Today, change is often portrayed
as expensive or scary,
but you can see
that there’s nothing scary
about living in a community
designed for cool,
where affordable,
efficient,
nontoxic air-conditioning
and refrigerators run on clean energy,
on and off the grid,
and in a community
where farmers get more income
because more of their produce
gets to market
and everyone rests easier
knowing that their vaccines
are safely stored in the clinic --
a clinic which, with a different roof
and different glass in the windows,
is safer for the nurse to work in.
What is scary is that we are not
having enough conversations
in enough places
and driving enough investments
into affordable, nonpolluting,
efficient solutions for cooling
for everyone on this warming planet.
Scientists are seeing that animals,
especially birds,
are beginning to shape-shift
to adapt to climate change.
As their environments get hotter --
so their ears are growing
and their beaks are growing
to help them cool down.
Now our species is not shapeshifting yet,
nor do I think bigger ears will help.
(Laughter)
But we can shape-shift
our cities and our towns,
and we can change the way
that we cool ourselves down
and we can change the way
that we keep our medicines and food safe.
Thank you.
(Applause and cheers)
(Applause)