Cooling technologies are vital for a functioning society – refrigeration for food and medicine, air-conditioning to adapt to a warming planet and heat pumps for decarbonised heating. But the refrigerants inside these technologies can exacerbate climate change, some of them hundreds or thousands times worse than carbon dioxide over a short time frame. Fortunately, there […]
As many parts of the UK swelter under the latest heatwave of the summer, interest in ways to keep cool is skyrocketing. There has been significant media interest on the relationship between heatwaves and climate change, as well as possible solutions to our overheating problem, particularly whether we should be encouraging the use of air-conditioning […]
As we approach the end of another year defined by record-breaking global temperatures and deadly natural disasters, turbo-charged by the escalating climate crisis, some 50,000 people have descended on Baku in Azerbaijan for the 29th annual UN Climate Change Conference (CoP29). For the third year in a row, EIA has looked into the systems being […]
It is widely acknowledged that the rapid roll-out of heat pumps is a key part of the UK’s net zero strategy, with a typical heat pump reducing emissions by up to 66-80 per cent compared to heating options reliant on fossil fuels. However, not all heat pumps are born equal. Some contain climate-polluting hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), […]
Cutting emissions of superpollutants provides an opportunity to more efficiently reduce greenhouse gas emissions than a focus solely on carbon dioxide. In other words, it packs a larger punch.
Sustainable cooling has received limited attention at the annual meetings under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, despite being a key tool for both climate mitigation and adaptation