Air conditioners and refrigerators provide essential services in the year round tropical climate of the Caribbean. Growing local populations and the tourism that helps drive many economies are demanding ever more cooling products. Unfortunately, the energy performance is largely unregulated, so inefficient models are common and up to 80 per cent of the electricity is wasted. With high electricity prices and reliance on imported fossil fuels, this waste has big implications: residents and businesses suffer from expensive power bills, utilities struggle to meet peak energy demand, governments are saddled with increasing dependence on imported energy (with prices that fluctuate), and pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are exacerbated.
Improving air conditioner and refrigerator performance with available and affordable solutions, while transitioning to new refrigerants (the gases used in the operation of the equipment), offers an unparalleled opportunity to address these challenges. The Bahamas, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and St. Lucia have been proactive in pursuing a variety of energy and environment goals over the years. They represent a diverse cross-section of the Caribbean, and their governments and tourism industries have express
BASE and partners from the United for Efficiency (U4E) network, including United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, launched the Caribbean Cooling Initiative in 2018. The initiative is funded by the Clean Cooling Collaborative (formerly K-CEP) to support the Kigali Amendment of the Montreal Protocol and phase out ozone-depleting greenhouse gases used as refrigerants.
During this two-year project, BASE supported U4E in assisting Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Barbados, The Bahamas and Saint Lucia with transitioning to energy-efficient and climate-friendly air conditioners and refrigerators through the Caribbean Cooling Initiative (C-COOL).
C-COOL resulted in the creation of National Cooling Strategies including policy recommendations such as for Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) and labelling, as well as the development of the financial mechanism Cooling as a Service for the Caribbean.
BASE was in charge of developing an effective financing strategy to scale up investment in energy efficient cooling systems in the Caribbean. To do so, BASE started by conducting a market assessment to identify the market size and sectors with opportunities, identify the key barriers to investment, and collect information about available technology in the respective markets and about the key actors from the demand, supply and finance side.
Based on these findings, the financial mechanism Cooling as a Service was developed and implemented in Dominican Republic and Jamaica in collaboration with local, regional and global technology providers, investments funds, and other partners. A toolkit including contractual arrangements, economic models, funding structures and explanatory documentation was developed and made publicly available to enable stakeholders from other countries within and beyond the scope of C-COOL to implement the model. Events, workshops and webinars were organised to raise awareness and build capacity about the financial mechanism.
The key implementation partners in Dominican Republic and in Jamaica are fully equipped to pilot the first CaaS model in the respective countries, and all have started approaching customers who positively responded to the opportunity to engage in a CaaS contract. In particular in Jamaica, a pipeline of projects was prepared by the partner technology providers. Overall, the financial mechanism developed within C-COOL has gained significant traction across the region.
Find out more about the programme on the UN Environment project page, and the United for Efficiency project page.
