By Eamonn Ryan
In her opening remarks at the Green Cooling Summit, Ingrid Gabriela Hoven, managing director of GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), outlined why the global HVAC&R sector is central to achieving climate and development goals.
Ingrid Gabriela Hoven, managing director of GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), addressing the seminar.
RACA Journal
Cooling is no longer just a comfort issue – it sits at the crossroads of climate policy, social equity, and energy securityFor HVAC professionals, this high-level policy view explains why regulations are tightening, why investors are prioritising low‑GWP solutions, and why ‘business as usual’ in cooling is rapidly becoming unsustainable.
The session opened with thanks and acknowledgements for the 10th anniversary of the initiative and the Green Cooling Summit. Despite some technical glitches with audio and video, Hoven pressed ahead with her message, underlining the strategic importance of cooling in the broader climate agenda.
She began by thanking key German institutions that have supported international work on cooling and climate:
- The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety
- The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
- The German Environment Agency
- GIZ, which has been instrumental in implementing projects worldwide under programmes such as Proklima
Hoven emphasised that cooling is no longer a niche technical topic. It is directly tied to:
- Climate change as a driver of social inequality
- Security risks in the 21st century
- The need to preserve stable, robust, and promising livelihoods around the globe
For HVAC&R stakeholders, this framing is crucial: the way buildings and industries are cooled is now considered a major lever for meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and for transitioning to a climate‑neutral and environmentally friendly economy and society. “In order to preserve stable and robust and promising livelihoods for all people around the world, it’s so important that we actually accelerate the transition to a climate-neutral and environmentally friendly economy and society.”
This sets the stage for a series of discussions at the summit focusing on how the cooling sector can evolve – technically, financially, and politically – to support global climate goals.
