By Eamonn Ryan
At the 2026 Green Cooling Summit hosted by GIZ, Yosr Allouche, director general of the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR), was introduced as the keynote speaker on a topic of growing global significance: ‘R290 as the Kigali Key for Efficient Room A/Cs’. This is part three of a three-part series.
The presentation commences.
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In the concluding portion of her presentation, Allouche turns from diagnosis to prescription: what concretely needs to happen now for R290 to fulfill its potential as a ‘Kigali key’ for efficient room air conditioners.
This reality underlines that the transition challenge is enormous, and while R290 is advancing, it needs accelerated support.
In the final part, Allouche focuses on what must happen next to scale R290 as a “Kigali key” – from standards updates and enforcement to training, incentives, manufacturer action, and end-user confidence building.
She emphasises that technology is no longer the main bottleneck. The core question is not whether R290 systems can work safely and efficiently – they can, and they already do in many markets – but rather:
- How fast can the sector move collectively?
- How quickly can standards be adapted and harmonised?
- How rapidly can technicians be trained and retrained?
- How soon can end users gain enough confidence to actively demand R290 solutions?
Allouche lays out several priority actions:
- Faster standards updates and better alignment.
- Accelerate revisions of national, regional, and international safety standards to enable safe but more flexible charge limits where justified by engineering measures; and ensure consistency between EU, international, and national frameworks.
Harmonisation reduces uncertainty for manufacturers and encourages broader global scaling of R290 product lines.
It’s not enough to have regulations on paper; they must be enforced consistently.
