Recap Day 1 | Green Cooling Summit 2026: Too green to scale? Why is R290 still struggling in room Air Conditioning and how to make it the standard?

In her keynote, Dr. Yosr Allouche (International Institute of Refrigeration) underscored that achieving the Kigali Implementation Plan (KIP) targets requires a sector-wide shift to R 290 in air conditioners and heat pumps. She highlighted the advantages of green room ACs—very low GWP and high energy efficiency—and noted the progress already made: global technician training, strengthened safety standards, supportive policy frameworks, and established production lines. However, despite all the action taken already, transformation to Green Cooling in buildings is still lagging. 

• Keynote: 00:17:09 - 00:21:49

In the Green Cooling Summit 2026 Kick-off Session, Joseph Baffoe (EPA Ghana) and William Melau (NOU Kenya) stressed that R290 AC market share must grow to meet HFC reduction targets under the KIP. They affirmed that R290 split ACs are the future, but countries such as Ghana and Kenya need full access to the technology and adequate cooling capacity. They also noted that global unit costs for efficient R 290 remain too high and must decline. The price gap is driven not only by production costs but also by manufacturers’ pricing policies—requiring a combined push and pull approach and support to cover residual additional costs.

• Joseph Baffoe: 00:21:49 - 00:38:37
• William Melau: 00:38:30 - end 

The first session hosted three financing experts who emphasized that a successful transition to sustainable cooling requires a financing strategy as much as technology solutions and governmental regulations. After the scene was set by Malin Emmerich (GIZ), Assad Nissar (International Finance Corporation) pointed out that, cooling sits in a structural blind spot for lenders and investors and emphasized the importance of incentivizing finance flows towards sustainable cooling. Second, Luiza Linton (agradblue) talked about sustainable taxonomies and their role in channeling capital towards sustainable cooling. Her key takeaway is, that more technical GWP criteria for refrigerants needs to enter sustainable taxonomies around the world via the technical input from the cooling community. Finally, Samuel Jacobs (Energy Partners Refrigeration) introduced servitization as an instrument for scale.

• Malin Emmerich & Assad Nissar: 00:00:00 - 00:19:47
• Luiza Linton: 00:20:10 - 00:35:20
• Samuel Jacobs: 00:35:39 - end

The first day of the Green Cooling Summit 2026 closed with a session on policies enabling the transformation to sustainable cooling. Two key presentations highlighted that policy frameworks can shape technology markets and that the effect is sometimes even visible before the regulation kicks in. Sebastian Schnatz (BMUKN) pointed out that Europe and the EU F-Gas Regulation can serve as a good example for a balance of bans and incentives with a high degree of investment certainty. Readlay Makaliki (SACREEE) introduced MEPS are an effective tool for countries to influence their appliance stock and future electricity consumption, ideally on regional level. 

• Sebastian Schnatz: 00:00:00 - 00:12:00
• Readlay Makaliki: 00:12:00 - 00:29:42