Key Pillars
The Key Pillars of Clean Cooling enabling us to reach our vision
The key pillars support the Clean Cooling strategy and initiatives in order to achieve our goal of... An integrated programme to accelerate the deployment of sustainable cold-chain solutions in developing markets at scale with fit-for-market business models and clean technologies.
How do you create the local and global “field to fork” connectivity to nutritiously feed 10 billion people in 2050, whilst economically empowering hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers whose livelihoods and well-being are often dependent on only 1-2 hectares of land or less, as well as ensure they are climate-change adaptation ready and resilient.… sustainably?
Key Pillars Explained
Our 9 pillars support the continual development of People, Environment, and Culture across the Clean Cooling Network.
Capacity Building & Training
- Training for farmers and co-operatives
- Training for community mobilisers
- Training for cold-chain engineers
- Training for policymakers and financial institutions
- Development of the SPOKEs network and CoE programme in India
- Cold-chains through the GESI lens
- Undergraduate and postgraduate degrees
Visit our Academy to view all training and professional development opportunities: Clean Cooling Academy
Finance & Business Models
- Financeable Business Models and deployment approaches
- Inclusive Financing Mechanisms, including blended finance solutions
- Return on Investment Model (social benefits) to underpin government’s investments
Review Business models available to help finance your cold-chain initiatives: Clean Cooling Models & Tools
System Design & Modelling
- Peer-reviewed data collection tools
- Horizon scanning
- Virtual modelling
- Telemetry and data collection
- Next-generation vaccine cold-chain infrastructure and systems
- Agrifood system testing from soil to fork (SMART FARM plus Cold-chain campus)
Review models and toolkits to help analyse your cold-chain requirements: Clean Cooling Toolkits
Technology Innovation & Demonstration
- Climate resilience
- Build and demonstrate off-grid Community Cooling Hubs
- Testing new technologies
- On-farm pre-cooling
- Off-grid, low GWP, efficient solutions through the cold-chain
- Off-grid vaccine cold-chain incl. ultra-cold
- Development of protocols for testing food safety and vaccine efficacy, and energy efficiency
- Support to existing technologies, including transition to efficient, low GWP alternatives
- Demonstrating new technologies (including through the SPOKEs and Try Before You Buy (TBYB)
- Lifecycle management
- Demonstration and sales channels for innovators
One Health & Resilience
Integrating sustainable cooling and cold-chain technologies within a One Health framework ensures that vaccines, diagnostics, seeds, foods, and wildlife samples retain their integrity from “farm to family” and back into environmental monitoring. One Health focuses on 4 key sub-pillars:
Immunisation Systems & Cold-chain Innovation
This theme links vaccine potency for humans and animals with sustainable cooling, ensuring equitable coverage and zoonotic disease prevention under One Health.
Seed Systems, Agricultural and Farming Resilience
Applying cold-chain and cryopreservation to seed banking, post-harvest management and biospecimen banking safeguards agrobiodiversity, farmer livelihoods, and ecosystem health.
Food and Nutrition Security & Dietary Health
Ensuring nutrient-rich foods reach consumers safely by leveraging ambient temperature stabilisation and sustainable cold-chain solutions.
Health System Resilience & Diagnostic Infrastructure
Building climate-resilient labs and environmental surveillance capacity backed by sustainable cooling to detect, prevent, and respond to health threats across species.
Enabling policies & thought leadership
- Promotion and adoption of a holistic, systems-based approach
- Risk radar and cold-chain security index
- Public, private community partnership financing
- Cooling as critical infrastructure
- Expansion of the Global Vision through a reference approach
- New strategies for energy savings and energy efficiency e.g. increasing the set point for frozen food by three degrees
- GESI - The programme is underpinned by a cross-cutting Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) workstream to include a comprehensive framework, tools, training, monitoring and evaluation.
Market Needs & Consumer Behaviour
Tools under development to better understand local market needs, value addition opportunities for smallholder farmers, and consumer behaviour to tailor solutions and strategies.
More to follow…
Energy Transition
- Energy Transition and Access (including electrification of transport strategies)
- Integrated energy services (including integration of renewable energy, waste heat and cold, and thermal energy storage)
Manufacturing & Assembly
We are developing in-country assembly and manufacturing capabilities to complement training activities, build local capacity, and improve the accessibility and availability of cooling technologies.
More to follow…
