Cooling for All Policy Review

The report assesses the global landscape of Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) for air conditioners and refrigerators, building energy efficiency codes, and urban heat mitigation. It highlights significant gaps in policy adoption and enforcement in Africa and other emerging markets, while noting that aligning standards with Best Available Technologies (BAT) could improve appliance energy performance by 50% to 65%.

• Many countries lack Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) for air conditioners, and existing standards often lack the stringency needed to drive consumer demand for energy-efficient models. In Africa, MEPS for ACs and refrigerators are rare, partly due to limited grid electricity access and financial barriers for residential cooling.
• Aligning room air conditioner MEPS with Best Available Technologies (BAT) could lead to an approximate 50% improvement in energy performance. Data for select economies shows significant variance between Business As Usual (BAU) consumption and BAT levels.
• There is a substantial energy savings potential for domestic refrigerators if MEPS are aligned with BAT, with estimated improvement potentials ranging between 55% and 65% compared to BAU. The data indicates that countries with higher volumes of refrigerators have not necessarily been more proactive in implementing stringent MEPS.
• Building energy efficiency codes are often voluntary or absent in many countries, and even where mandatory codes exist, they frequently lack requirements for passive cooling design, such as insulation, shading, and orientation. Globally, nearly two-thirds of countries score 33 points or less on the RISE scale for building efficiency codes.
• The adoption of urban heat island policies, such as cool roofs, is hindered by a lack of awareness, insufficient markets for products, and a mismatch between large-scale projects and existing resiliency funding mechanisms.
• In Sub-Saharan Africa, governments have committed to allocating at least 10% of national budgets to agriculture since the 2003 Maputo declaration. Some countries, specifically Kenya and Tanzania, have shifted focus toward reducing postharvest loss through market-based perspectives.

APA

Sustainable Energy for All (2018). Cooling for All Policy Review. https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2019-05/PolicyReview.pdf

Chicago

Sustainable Energy for All. Cooling for All Policy Review. 2018. https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2019-05/PolicyReview.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Sustainable Energy for All |title=Cooling for All Policy Review |date=March 2018 |url=https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2019-05/PolicyReview.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{sustainableenergyforall2018cooling, author = {{Sustainable Energy for All}}, title = {{Cooling for All Policy Review}}, institution = {Sustainable Energy for All}, year = {2018}, month = mar, url = {https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2019-05/PolicyReview.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }