Global Cooling Prize finalists announced in New Delhi
Barocal, a green cooling start-up from Cambridge, UK, has been named as a finalist in the Global Cooling Prize. The company was one of eight companies and the sole finalist from Europe.
Established as a coalition led by the Indian Government along with Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), the Global Cooling Prize is an innovation competition to develop super-efficient and climate-friendly residential cooling solutions.
The competitors showcased cooling technologies that are more energy efficient and reduce the use of refrigerants linked to climate change - advances that will be vital as the number of room air conditioners around the globe is forecast to nearly quadruple by 2050.
As well as Barocal, the finalist teams include three of the world's largest AC manufacturers - China's Gree Electric Appliances, Japan's Daikin AirConditioning, and India's Godrej and Boyce - as well as startups and smaller corporations, S&S Design; Transaera of Massachusetts, US; M2 Thermal Solutions, Kraton Corporation of Texas, US.
The finalist teams showcased a wide range of cooling technology solutions, including smart hybrid vapour compression, evaporative cooling, and solid-state technology, which cools with little or no refrigerants that contribute to global warming.
A total of 139 teams from 31 countries entered the competition. The finalists have been awarded $200,000 (€180,000) each to develop and ship their prototypes to India for testing in the summer of 2020.
The winner will be announced in November of 2020 based on the performance of the finalist prototypes and awarded at least $1-million (€900,000) in prize money for commercialisation and scaling support.
"It gives me immense satisfaction to say that we have received some absolutely revolutionary cooling ideas," said Richard Branson, founder and CEO of the Virgin Group and global ambassador for the prize. "What makes this competition exciting is the market transformation opportunity. It could be one of the biggest technology-based steps to arrest climate change. I look forward to following all of you on your journey to winning the Prize and scaling your technology."
A global coalition led by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, RMI, a leading global research institute; and Mission Innovation, a global initiative of 24 countries and the EU to accelerate global clean energy innovation, launched the Global Cooling Prize in November 2018 with the aim of spurring the development of a climate-friendly residential cooling solution.
RMI's Chief Executive Officer, Jules Kortenhorst, highlighted the impact of such innovations in the future. "The Residential AC industry represents a $60-billion market today and is set to grow to nearly four times that size by 2050," he said. "The Prize initiates an era of transformation for the cooling industry. The winning breakthrough technology has the potential to prevent up to 0.5 degrees of global warming by 2100."
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