K-CEP rebranded as Clean Cooling Collaborative

Name change is intended to reflect the next phase of organisation’s global work to ensure more energy efficient, less carbon intensive cooling

The Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program (K-CEP) has rebranded itself as the Clean Cooling Collaborative to represent a more holistic approach to tackle the environmental impacts from across the sector.

A decision to change the name of the organisation is intended to mark a new phase of its global cooling efficiency work. This will include expanding efforts to link thermal comfort and cooling technologies with lower carbon energy networks and generation.

A statement from the group said it would continue to look at issues of energy efficiency in the cooling sector, as well as support a focus on helping industry move away from higher GWP refrigerants that is also a major focus of European and UK F-Gas regulations.

The Clean Cooling Collaborative said, “We now have the opportunity to more actively support the transition to climate-friendly refrigerants and ensure that these efforts are synchronised with improvements in energy efficiency.”

The collaborative added that it would also be campaigning for stronger enforcement and compliance of regulations needed to help curb the industry’s carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. These regulations will be important to better manage and ensure higher emitting cooling technologies and solutions are not being shipped to other countries instead of being replaced by lower carbon alternatives outright.

The Clean Cooling Collaborative stated, “We will increase our support for passive cooling and cold chain solutions, as well as play a greater role in connecting cooling to building electrification and grid decarbonisation efforts by helping to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps and integrating AC into demand-response programs.”

New director

Part of the organisation’s rebrand includes the appointment of Noah Horowitz as the organisation’s director. Mr Horowitz will help steer the direction of the Clean Cooling Collaborative going forward to look at a range of different factors impacting the environmental impacts of cooling around the world.

The organisation was established as K-CEP in 2017 to help support global efforts to phaseout higher GWP refrigerants as outlined under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.

Mr Horowitz said that the collaborative, while operating as K-CEP, has built a strong foundation to help drive affordable and net zero cooling a reality.

He added, “The Kigali Amendment has the potential to avoid up to 0.4 deg C of global warming by the end of the century, with the enhanced energy efficiency of cooling set to double the climate benefits.”