FINANCING ACCESS TO COOLING SOLUTIONS

The document identifies significant barriers to financing sustainable cooling, including the diversity of needs across human comfort, agriculture, and health sectors, and a lack of global tracking for cooling-specific investments. It argues that while private capital is abundant, it is often too risk-averse for the innovative or low-income contexts where cooling is most needed. The brief highlights the role of the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program (K-CEP) and suggests leveraging blended finance, national cooling action plans, and bulk procurement to scale solutions. It specifically emphasizes the need to coordinate funding for refrigerant replacement (via the Montreal Protocol) with energy efficiency improvements to maximize climate benefits.

• Financing for cooling is complicated by a wide diversity of needs, ranging from human comfort for over 2 billion people to cold chains for food and vaccines. For the poor, high upfront costs often lead to the purchase of the least energy-efficient and most carbon-intensive products.
• There is a critical lack of formal tracking for access to cooling finance, which hinders the ability to establish baselines, understand trends, and identify gaps. Current data often relies on proxies from electricity access or general energy efficiency, which miss passive building design and specific cold chain investments.
• Private capital is dominated by risk-averse sources, while the public and philanthropic sources that can tolerate higher risks are more limited. In many developing countries, the investment climate is perceived as high risk due to political unrest, corruption, and weak contract enforcement.
• A significant gap exists in the coordination between the Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol (MLF), which funds refrigerant replacement, and other climate funds that support energy efficiency. This lack of alignment may result in lost opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the energy used to power cooling systems.
• Blended finance, which uses concessional public or philanthropic capital to attract private investment, has the potential to increase investment up to ten-fold. However, its application to cooling is limited to projects that can produce steady cash flows to repay institutional investors.
• Bulk procurement is an effective strategy to reduce costs for efficient cooling. In India, a joint venture used USD 68 million in public resources to procure 100,000 room air conditioners, later securing USD 300 million in World Bank financing to expand the program to ceiling fans.

APA

Miller, A., Uwamaliya, A., Hartley, B., & di Schio, C. R. (2020). FINANCING ACCESS TO COOLING SOLUTIONS. Sustainable Energy for All. https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2021-04/Financing-Cooling-SEforALL.pdf

Chicago

Miller, Alan, Alice Uwamaliya, Ben Hartley, and Clotilde Rossi di Schio. FINANCING ACCESS TO COOLING SOLUTIONS. Sustainable Energy for All, 2020. https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2021-04/Financing-Cooling-SEforALL.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Miller |first1=Alan |last2=Uwamaliya |first2=Alice |last3=Hartley |first3=Ben |last4=di Schio |first4=Clotilde Rossi |title=FINANCING ACCESS TO COOLING SOLUTIONS |publisher=Sustainable Energy for All |date=1 March 2020 |url=https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2021-04/Financing-Cooling-SEforALL.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{miller2020financing, author = {Miller, Alan and Uwamaliya, Alice and Hartley, Ben and di Schio, Clotilde Rossi}, title = {{FINANCING ACCESS TO COOLING SOLUTIONS}}, institution = {Sustainable Energy for All}, year = {2020}, month = mar, url = {https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2021-04/Financing-Cooling-SEforALL.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }