Europe is heating up faster than much of the rest of the world. Even back in the summer of 2003, over 70,000 people died across the continent due to extreme temperatures. At the time, this event was seen as a rare catastrophe, a one-time event. Two decades later, these kinds of heatwaves are no longer outliers. The heatwaves of recent years have brought surging hospital admissions and thousands of preventable deaths. What was once exceptional is becoming normal.
Cooling is no longer a question of comfort. It is critical for public health, food and drug safety, and the stability of our digital infrastructure. Yet the technologies that provide this relief are themselves contributing to the problem. Refrigeration and air conditioning already account for around 20 percent of electricity use in buildings and roughly 7 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Unless new approaches take hold, the number of appliances in use could triple by 2050, locking in vast amounts of energy demand and emissions.
This contradiction – cooling to stay alive in a hotter world while simultaneously intensifying the climate crisis – has prompted the idea of a “Cold Economy”. The concept is straightforward: design cooling systems to deliver the same or better services while reducing their environmental footprint dramatically. For Europe, taking this step could mean the difference between an overheating and unproductive society and a livable future for generations to come.
Rethinking How We Cool
The idea of low-carbon cooling rests on three strategies. The first is to avoid or reduce demand where possible. Urban design, reflective building surfaces, shading, and natural ventilation can all lower indoor temperatures without relying on machine cooling services. The second is to improve efficiency. The International Energy Agency estimates that most air conditioners sold today are two to three times less efficient than the best available models, largely because consumers opt for cheaper upfront prices rather than long-term savings. The third is to change the underlying energy and materials. Phasing out high-GWP refrigerants under the EU’s F-gas Regulation, integrating renewable electricity and thermal storage, and exploring service-based models such as “cooling as a service” can all cut emissions while still delivering comfort. 
The Scale of the Challenge
Global demand for space cooling is growing faster than for any other energy service. The IEA projects that, without major improvements, electricity demand from cooling alone could more than triple by 2050, reaching levels comparable to the current total power consumption of China and India combined. By 2035, cooling could add as much as 1,200 terawatt-hours to global demand, more than the projected increase from data centres and artificial intelligence combined.
Household ownership of air conditioners is expected to surge. A recent study in Nature Communications found that global ownership could rise from just over a quarter today to well above 40 percent by mid-century, pushing residential electricity demand for cooling close to 4,000 terawatt-hours annually. These pressures are already visible in Europe during heatwaves, when cooling loads push national grids toward their limits.
Why Europe Cannot Afford to Wait
The need for cooling is not only confined to megacities. Heat mortality in Europe is climbing, and projections suggest that heat-related deaths in England and Wales could triple by mid-century if adaptation lags. Food systems are also vulnerable. Roughly one third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted, and weak cold-chain infrastructure is a major factor.
Yet Europe is not without its own solutions and tools that could accelerate the shift. Its regulatory regime is among the strictest in the world, phasing out refrigerants with high warming potential and tightening appliance standards. European firms are advancing low-GWP refrigerants, efficient heat exchangers, and thermal storage technologies. And the region’s green bond market, already one of the largest globally, provides financing channels for retrofitting and new clean-cooling projects.
Capturing Hidden Resources
Beyond better machines and buildings there is another another potential improvement: capturing cold energy that is currently wasted. One example is the regasification of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Roughly 70% of LNG terminals release the cold energy generated during the regasification process into the sea, instead of reusing it. But globally, it is estimated that 6.1 GW of cold energy could be reclaimed from such terminals and repurposed for industrial refrigeration or district cooling. In modeled scenarios, even an average‑sized LNG regasification facility could recover about 37 MJ of cold energy using a brazed‑plate heat exchanger. Integrating such resources with technologies like liquid-air energy storage could ease grid stress, improve efficiency, and cut emissions.
Finance and Policy as Enablers
Transforming the cooling sector requires capital and clear rules. Stronger minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) have been repeatedly described as a core lever. Even leading institutions like the IFC/UNEP argue that efficiency thresholds must be embedded in cooling‑finance decisions. Yet regulations alone aren’t enough. Labelling schemes also play a crucial role in guiding consumer choices and educating people. Programs established under the Ecodesign and EU taxonomy regimes help consumers distinguish equipment and give information on appliance performance, helping both individuals and institutions identify energy-efficient systems.
Public procurement is increasingly recognised as a powerful tool: EU Green Public Procurement (GPP) criteria, and proposed reforms to the Public Procurement Directive, aim to require contracting authorities to favor environmentally-friendly goods and systems.
On the financing side, green bonds and sustainable debt instruments are already helping underwrite low‑carbon building retrofits in Europe.
Supporting mechanisms such as performance guarantees, revolving funds, and risk mitigation tools are also are also popular proposals for reducing upfront cost burdens and make investment in sustainable cooling more viable.
Equity and Global Responsibility
Cooling is also fundamentally a matter of fairness and wealth distribution. Even within Europe extreme heat disproportionally affects people who are elderly, low‑income, or live in poorly-insulated homes. Recent studies confirm that these groups have less capacity to adapt, physically or financially, and thus face higher health risks. Furthermore, in many low‑ and middle‑income countries, farmers lose a large share of their harvest due to unreliable or non-existent refrigeration. Improving access to the cold chain can thus significantly reduce post‑harvest losses and boost incomes for the agricultural sector. Fragile health cold chains also jeopardise vaccine delivery. In Europe alone, up to 25% of doses in some cases are wasted because of a lack of dependable cold storage or cold chain failures in transport.
This is where Europe has room to lead by helping partner countries adopt clean cold chain solutions. Initiatives in FAO and UNEP Cool Coalition partner countries are showing how renewable energy-powered cold chains and solar cooling infrastructure can protect food security and health without locking in high emissions.
What Green Cooling Could Look Like
- Design-Based Solutions
Integrate the use of “passive” cooling to reduce the energy demand while providing comfort for citizens. Urban planning and architectural design such as shading, reflective surfaces, and natural ventilation can significantly reduce reliance on mechanical cooling.
- Improve Efficiency of Active Cooling
Even modern, widely sold air conditioners are two to three times less efficient than the best available models. Enforcement of stricter Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) and consumer labelling could naturally shift market choices toward more efficient products and consumer behaviour.
- Capture and Reuse Cold Energy
Liquid air, waste heat integration, and especially “waste cold” from LNG regasification offer promising opportunities. If harnessed wisely, this cold energy could serve district cooling systems or enhance energy storage, easing pressure on the grid and reducing emissions.
- Embrace District Cooling
In contrast to traditional air conditioning, which works on a per-building basis, district cooling centralises production and delivers chilled water via underground networks. The EU Covenant of Mayors emphasises that such systems provide efficient cooling, use significantly less energy, and can tap into low-carbon sources like seawater, geothermal heat, or industrial waste heat. Between 2010 and 2019, residential cooling energy in the Eurozone nearly tripled, and forecasts suggest it could make up 9% of total energy demand by 2050 without structural change. For example, Marseille’s district cooling network uses seawater in tandem with a heating system to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80%, responding to both climate goals and cooling demand.
Toward a European Cold Economy
The benefits of embracing the Cold Economy are immense, both for lowering energy bills and improving comfort. Cleaner refrigerants and materials reduce emissions and create new industrial opportunities, while capturing waste cold makes better use of resources already in the system. The choice is not whether to cool, but how. Europe, with its regulatory and financial depth, as well as industrial expertise, has the chance to make that choice count in ways that keep all people equally safe without pushing the climate further off course.
