COP President Alok Sharma visits a unique Centre in Africa dedicated to supporting sustainable cooling.
COP President Alok Sharma visting ACES.
COP President, the Rt. Hon. Alok Sharma MP, visited the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-chain (ACES) during his attendance at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda.
Currently 7% of the world’s emissions come from cooling - from food and vaccine cold-chains to air conditioning to high-tech innovation - and demand for cooling will only grow as global temperatures increase.
ACES is a first-of-kind Centre dedicated to generating ideas, technology and capacity building to support sustainable cooling that doesn't cause a spike in energy demand or exacerbate climate change further.
ACES is a demonstration of how we can work together, to help tackle rising emissions and keep alive the goal of limiting average global temperature rises. Cooling and refrigeration are the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, especially in developing countries. But this challenge gives us the opportunity to develop innovative, energy efficient technologies of the future."
The COP President said, “ACES is a demonstration of how we can work together, to help tackle rising emissions and keep alive the goal of limiting average global temperature rises to 1.5°C.
“Cooling and refrigeration are the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, especially in developing countries. But this challenge gives us the opportunity to develop innovative, energy efficient technologies of the future.
“Spearheaded by UK experts and £16 million of DEFRA funding, ACES is dedicated to developing innovative cooling technologies and providing training to apply those technologies.”
Through a “hub and spoke” model, the Centre is being developed by the Governments of Rwanda and the United Kingdom (UK), University of Rwanda, United Nations Environment Programme and the UK's Centre for Sustainable Cooling leading a consortium of UK universities.
Alongside the UK commitment, the Government of Rwanda is providing the five-hectare campus and cash for renovating existing buildings, backed by industry support to develop new bespoke facilities on-site.
ACES is the merger of key social and environmental targets. As project co-leader and ACES co-Director Professor Toby Peters from the University of Birmingham explains: “By 2050, global food demand is set to grow by between 59% and 98%. In sub-Saharan Africa, almost 50% of fruits and vegetables are lost mainly due to improper cold chain management.
“Given the economic, environmental and social impact, food saved and the food system is as important as food produced. The challenge is how to create local and global temperature controlled ‘field to fork’ from hundreds of millions of subsistence and small-scale farmers whose livelihoods are often dependent on only 1-2 hectares or less, whilst using renewable energy and climate friendly technologies.”
A key focus of the Centre is on clean cold-chains. Globally, 536 million tonnes (12% of total food production) are lost due to lack of cold-chain, enough to feed around 1 billion people. In Rwanda, as an example, food loss equates to 21% of its total land use, 16% of GHG emissions, and 12% loss to its annual Gross Domestic Product. Similarly, 25% of vaccines are wasted globally due to failures within cold-chains; more than 1.5 million people globally die from vaccine-preventable diseases each year.
The campus will include a state-of-the-art refrigeration training centre complementing training at IPRC (Integrated Polytechnic Regional Centre); a technology demo hall and innovation centre and quality control labs. UK funding is also supporting the development of outreach SPOKEs across Africa, the first of which is being developed in Kenya.
ACES Founder Industry Partner (FIP) Danfoss was also present for the visit. FIPs are making multi-year commitments, with Danfoss already providing sustainable refrigeration technology for a novel demonstrator “community cooling hub”, a training cold store and extensive training material for refrigeration installers. The company also used the event to open its first East Africa regional office on the campus.
Ziad Al Bawaliz, regional President for Turkey, Middle East, and Africa at Danfoss: comments: “At Danfoss, we are committed to supporting the expansion of a sustainable cold chain, to decarbonise from farm to fork with energy-efficient, climate-friendly technologies and training support for installers.”
For more information, please contact Tony Moran, International Communications Manager, University of Birmingham, on +44 (0)782 783 2312 or t.moran@bham.ac.uk. For out-of-hours enquiries, please call +44 (0) 7789 921 165.
The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 6,500 international students from over 150 countries.
In Rwanda, as an example:
The UK medical team in-country includes Christopher Green who shares his time between working for the NHS as an Infectious Diseases physician and clinical research as an Associate Clinical Professor in Infectious Diseases at the University of Birmingham. Dr Green and his team led Birmingham and the West Midlands through the many accelerated Covid-19 vaccine trials that were needed to safely end the pandemic – from Phase 1 (first-in-man) through to Phase 3 (efficacy) stages of vaccine evaluation. UHB lead clinical trials pharmacist, Amisha Desai-Sharma, and the lead research nurse, Claire Brown, supported him on over eight MHRA-regulated CTIMPs that involved over 1400 members of the UK public and over 200 NHS research nurses, doctors, pharmacists and data managers. The ACES project has further support from experts at the University of Birmingham, in the form of Alex Richter and Sian Faustini, who have developed minimally invasive blood testing methods to help characterise immunity to many vaccine-preventable diseases.
Professor in Cold Economy
Professor Toby Peters is an award-winning technology developer and industrial academic with more than 14 years of experience in energy storage /energy systems.
