Global Cooling Prize

The Global Cooling Prize is an innovation competition to develop a climate-friendly residential cooling solution. This will provide access to energy efficient cooling to people around the world without warming the planet. CEPT University is part of the Operating Council along with the Rocky Mountain Institute Conservation X Labs (CXL), Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE) and will be responsible for the detailed design, planning, organization, and implementation of the Prize.

India has one of the lowest access to cooling across the world, however rising aspirations, urbanization population growth, and increasing frequency of climate-related extreme events in cities will drive the increase in cooling demand in the coming years. Most of this demand will be met by room air-conditioning units, which will place a significant burden on electricity grid infrastructure and consumers. Drastic transformation of residential cooling technology through innovation can improve people’s health, productivity, and well-being, all while avoiding runaway climate change. However, the market is not moving fast enough to provide a solution at scale.

The Global Cooling Prize, launched by a growing international coalition is aimed at providing a stimulus to the development of a radically more energy-efficient cooling technology. The prize will attract talent from across sectors and around the world to design a cooling solution for an existing apartment home in a mid or high rise apartment building in dense urban environment that will have at least 5X less climate impact. The winning solution will also need to operate within predefined limitations on refrigerants, water, full-load power consumption, emissions, volumetric size, materials, and operational requirements. It will also need to be affordable to typical consumers. This type of technology has the potential to avoid up to 5,900 TWh/year in demand in 2050, equivalent to 2X the annual generation of electricity within the European Union.

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