Climate change – cooling now and for the future.
Jürgen Fischer, president of Danfoss Climate Solutions and Martin Rossen, senior vice president for communication & sustainability at Danfoss, formerly chief of staff in the Prime Minister’s Office of Denmark outline the role of cooling technologies in responding to planetary and societal needs.
This past summer in Europe, we witnessed unprecedented temperatures, breaking records across multiple countries, such as 41C in the UK, on July 19, an all-time high, and 35.6C in Denmark, the hottest day since 1941.
May recorded the hottest-ever temperatures for France and Spain, enduring spells above 40°C for several days at a time. The heatwave sparked a series of wildfires fuelled by a drought that is still troubling the entire continent today (even though it’s early October now). Globally, it looks even worse. For example, in India, which we recently both visited, the ravaging effects of the heat wave in March resulted in death, starvation, and major power outages.
Cooling is no luxury, although you often get that impression from the media. Cooling as luxury should be seen as a relic from the past. And yet, there remains an alarming lack of understanding of the sheer impact of cooling. To put it bluntly, as mentioned in the latest Chilling Prospect report: One in every seven people are at risk from life-threatening temperatures or broken cold chains. Neither people nor the planet can afford inaction on sustainable cooling. And to put the numbers into a rounder figure: according to a study in The Lancet, approximately 500,000 people die from heat each year, and this figure will only increase as the world’s average temperature surges beyond 1.5°C and 2°C warming in the 2030s and 40s.
Cooling: An essential technology for global health?