Project description
Low-carbon cooling technologies keep spaces comfortable in a sustainable way
Global climate change and emissions are tightly intertwined. Our last decade was the warmest on record, and we are all aware by now of our need to reduce human activity-related emissions to slow global warming. Unfortunately, warming has increased Europe's reliance on cooling. This has resulted in its emergence to the forefront of areas targeted for decarbonisation. The EU-funded CO-COOL will bring together a large international consortium to develop improved cooling technologies that leverage either renewable electricity/heat or waste heat to keep people and spaces cool without warming our planet.
Objective
Cooling is the fastest-growing use of energy in buildings but is also one of the most critical blind spots in today’s energy debate. Rising demand for space cooling is putting enormous strain on electricity systems in many countries, as well as driving up emissions. Comparing to heat, power, and transport, cooling had long been under-represented in the EU energy policy until 2016 when the European Commission took the first step with the launch of its Heating and Cooling Strategy. The strategy identifies actions of ‘increasing the share of renewables’ and ‘reuse of energy waste from industry’ as two key areas for decarbonizing cooling to meet the EU’s climate goals by 2050. Accordingly, the targets are only achievable with fast development and deployment of new efficient and effective cooling technologies driven by either ‘renewable electricity/heat’ or waste heat. This CO-COOL RISE project assembles an international, interdisciplinary consortium from 12 research institutions and 5 industrial companies to collectively accelerate the cooling technology development and deployment, with complementary expertise/skills including composite solids, phase change materials (PCMs), complex fluids, process intensification (heat and mass transfer), cold thermal storage, refrigeration systems, as well as techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA), marketing analysis, and entrepreneurship skills. Based on the innovation of composite solids (sorbents/PCMs) and fluids (PCMs and hydrate slurries) as well as related components and systems, the project aims to develop renewable/recoverable energy driven, storage-integrated cooling technologies which could offer energy resource-efficient and cost-effective solutions to meet end-users’ low carbon cooling demand.
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Coordinator
B15 2TT Birmingham
United Kingdom