A newly approved project with funding of €3 million from the European Union will promote market transformation of the large-scale commercial air conditioning sector in Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Grenada through the introduction of District Cooling.

The project aims to create capacity at the national level to support the effective uptake of District Cooling solutions, and to strengthen public and private institutions and companies that are a part of the value chain. The four countries were selected based on previous work conducted by UNDP in each of the four countries.

There is a political will to promote energy efficient measures and to reduce emissions from the cooling sector. The countries have high energy costs, which is a precondition to make energy efficient investments more attractive.

Finally, UNDP is currently implementing other projects in the cooling sector in the four countries. This will facilitate the work under this project as many of the relevant stakeholders are already part of existing initiatives.