Expanding global cold chains is vital for meeting several of the Sustainable Development Goals relating to poverty reduction, food security, health and wellbeing, and climate action. Globally, 526 million tonnes (12 per cent of total food production) are lost due to lack of cold chains, enough to feed more than 1 billion people. In Rwanda, for example, food loss equates to 21 per cent of its total land use, 16 per cent of GHG emissions, and 12 per cent loss to its annual Gross Domestic Product. In short – food saved is as important as food produced. Similarly, 25 per cent of vaccine doses are wasted globally due to failures within cold-chains. At the same time, conventional cooling technologies are highly polluting due to the climate impact of refrigerants (HFCs) and the indirect emissions from energy use. They account for 7 per cent of all global GHG emissions, exacerbating the climate crisis and contributing to their own demand.
UNEP promotes equitable and sustainable cold-chains solutions through its United for Efficiency (U4E) initiative. Along with partners in the UK and Rwanda, U4E has established the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain (ACES) to develop and accelerate uptake of sustainable cold-chain solutions in the agriculture and health sectors throughout Africa and India.
Working with governments, industry, academia, communities and other stakeholders, ACES is a comprehensive hub for state-of-the-art technical assistance and knowledge transfer along the ‘farm-to-fork’ continuum.
The core structure of ACES is a Centre of Excellence with collaborative research, testing of new equipment, development of knowledge and delivery of training programmes as well as awareness raising. ACES is complemented with Specialized Outreach and Knowledge Establishments (SPOKEs) where solutions are demonstrated into rural communities to share knowledge with local markets in order to accelerate deployment of sustainable smart cold-chain. The first of these is currently being developed in Kenya.
