Cooling is finally coming in from the cold. After many years on the side lines of the energy debate, the importance of cooling to modern ways of living for all, but also the damage it causes to the environment and our health, is being recognised. And so it should be sustainable, affordable artificial cooling with minimal global warming or environmental impact is nothing less than critical to societal, environmental and economic sustainability worldwide. This report explores new outcome and needs-driven, integrated, system- level approaches that re-imagine the way we use and deliver cooling. In so doing it seeks to understand the portfolio of cooling needs, the size and location of the multiple thermal, waste and ‘wrong-time’ energy resources available, and then identify the novel energy vectors, thermal stores and cooling technologies appropriate for the societal, climate and infrastructure context. In short, what we call the Cold Economy: transitioning from technology to system.
