[First posted on Dec 2018, winners announced see update below]
It is wonderful to see the growth of the developing nations but it also comes with variety of problems that we have to deal with. As the economies grow, incomes raise and that leads to wanting/spending on better quality of life, naturally, like better food, clothing and comfortable living.
Looks like buying AC units is one of the top purchases people make (as they are hot regions) and they are expected to grow from current 1.1 Billion to 4.5 Billion global installed units by 2050! That is a huge increase and will no doubt strain the power grids and also causes global temps to go up as much .5 degrees!
The current market leaders in AC units are all focused on cheap AC units and are not focused on creating efficient units (avg efficiency is 7%) or alternative ways of cooling for obvious financial reasons. It is up to us disruptors to figure a solution. Now, for the motivated there is a Global Cooling Challenge in collaboration with Indian Gov.
The problem of cooling and electricity generation/consumption can be addressed in many ways but this challenge is focused on creating new type of residential AC units that will have 5x less climate impact and uses 4-5x less energy. Good luck to all the Pieneers!
As always, know of anyone or any startup working on this, please let me know, I will update this post.
Update (June 2022)- Two winners are chosen, read about them on the Global Cooling Challenge page.
[Image Credit: Thanks to skowalewski via Pixabay]
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