The IKEA Foundation has announced a four-year, $25 million grant to the Clean Cooling Collaborative to advance solutions for efficient, climate-friendly cooling. 

The Clean Cooling Collaborative works to shift governments, industries, and consumers toward using efficient, climate-friendly cooling technologies; reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement; and improve billions of lives. While appliances such as air conditioners and refrigerators were designed to protect people, food, and medicine from heat, they add greenhouse gas emissions through the energy used to operate them and by refrigerants leaking fluorinated gases into the atmosphere. The Clean Cooling Collaborative, the largest philanthropic program of its kind, has launched a set of strategies aimed at avoiding 100 gigatons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions globally by 2050.

“Climate change is fueling record-setting heat waves around the globe, which put the lives and livelihoods of over 1.2 billion people at risk due to a lack of access to cooling,” said Edgar van de Brug, program manager for climate action at the IKEA Foundation. “We’re proud to join the Clean Cooling Collaborative and support their ambitious plan to promote efficient, climate-friendly cooling solutions to reduce emissions and create a healthy planet for people worldwide.”

“We believe cooling should be a human right, and the sector must be on a more sustainable and accessible path as demand for air conditioning explodes worldwide,” said Clean Cooling Collaborative director Noah Horowitz. “We welcome the IKEA Foundation to the Clean Cooling Collaborative. Their generous support will help supercharge our collective efforts to boost appliance efficiency and the use of climate-friendly refrigerants, expand global access to more sustainable cooling, and use these solutions to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come.” 

(Photo credit: SB Stock)