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STORY: BELEM / COP30 GLOBAL COOLING REPORT
TRT: 02:16
SOURCE: COURTESY EMPRESA BRASIL DE COMUNICAÇÃO (EBC) / UN NEWS
RESTRICTIONS: PLEASE CREDIT EBC ON SCREEN
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 11 NOVEMBER 2025, BELEM, BRAZIL
1. Wide shot, exterior COP30 venue
2. Wide shot, interior COP30 venue
3. Wide shot, press conference dais
4. Med shot, participants
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Inger Andersen, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP):
“Access to cooling must be treated as an essential piece of infrastructure alongside water, energy and sanitation. Because cooling saves lives and keeps economies and schools and hospitals running.”
6. Wide shot, press conference dais
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Inger Andersen, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP):
“We can’t air conditioning our way out of this heat crisis. We have to, if we do that, then we would just drive-up greenhouse gases, raise costs, cause grid overload and essentially peak demand. Instead, we have to think about smart buildings, affordable cooling, ambient cooling, ambient infrastructure, integrating the environment into the urban setting while cutting energy sectors and the carbon footprint of the cooling itself. This report shows that it can be done through sustainable cooling pathways.”
8. Med shot, participants
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Ruth Do Coutto, Deputy Director, Climate Change Division, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP):
“Unfortunately, as you can see, the more we cool, the more we emit. So, cooling emissions are growing and will double by 2050 if we do not adopt more sustainable cooling practices. However, what the report has shown us that there is a pathway, that it's called the sustainable cooling pathway that demonstrates that we can meet this demand for cooling that we all need while cutting emissions if we implement measures together.”
10. Wide shot, press conference dais
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Inger Andersen, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP):
“Part of the work that we're doing here is, frankly, learning from the past, learning from those who went before us. Sometimes they are indigenous people, other times they are just rural communities that know the ways. We happen to be based in Nairobi, Kenya, and we know very well what it means to build with nature and understand how you can work with the sun, especially when you sit right on the equator. And, and as a working with the ambience, that there is.”
12. Wide shot, end of presser
A report launched today (11 Nov) at COP30 in Belém by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) shows that amid rising heatwaves and surging cooling demand, adopting sustainable cooling could cut greenhouse gas emissions, save trillions of dollars and expand life-saving cooling access to those who need it.
Speaking at the launch of the report, UNEP’s Executive Director Inger Andersen said, “access to cooling must be treated as an essential piece of infrastructure alongside water, energy and sanitation. Because cooling saves lives and keeps economies and schools and hospitals running.”
Nevertheless, Andersen said, “we can’t air conditioning our way out of this heat crisis,” as this would “drive up greenhouse gases, raise costs, cause grid overload and essentially peak demand.”
Instead, she continued, “we have to think about smart buildings, affordable cooling, ambient cooling, ambient infrastructure, integrating the environment into the urban setting while cutting energy sectors and the carbon footprint of the cooling itself.”
For her part, the Deputy Director of UNEP’s Climate Change Division, Ruth Do Coutto, said, “the more we cool, the more we emit. So, cooling emissions are growing and will double by 2050 if we do not adopt more sustainable cooling practices. However, what the report has shown us that there is a pathway, that it's called the sustainable cooling pathway that demonstrates that we can meet this demand for cooling that we all need while cutting emissions if we implement measures together.”
The UNEP report suggests adopting a Sustainable Cooling Pathway, which could reduce emissions to 64 percent below the levels expected in 2050. Andersen said this includes “learning from the past, learning from those who went before us,” to cool living space using the forces of nature.
The launch of the report will be accompanied by a special announcement on the Mutirão Contra o Calor Extremo / Beat the Heat implementation drive – a collective effort led by the Brazil COP30 presidency and UNEP Cool Coalition underscoring the urgency to strengthen national-to-local collaboration and bridge gaps in finance, policy, and delivery for extreme heat resilience and sustainable cooling locally.
