Browsing by Author "Khosla, Radhika"

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    Overcoming the incumbency and barriers to sustainable cooling
    (Ubiquity Press, 2022-12-22) Lizana, Jesus; Miranda, Nicole D.; Gross, Larisa; Mazzone, Antonella; Cohen, Francois; Palafox-Alcantar, Giovani; Fahr, Patrick; Jani, Anant; Renaldi, Renaldi; McCulloch, Malcolm; Khosla, Radhika
    This article examines cooling in the built environment, an area of rapidly rising energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, the status quo of cooling is assessed and proposals are made for how to advance towards sustainable cooling through five levers of change: social interactions, technology innovations, business models, governance and infrastructure design. Achieving sustainable cooling requires navigating the opportunities and barriers presented by the incumbent technology that currently dominates the way in which cooling is provided—the vapour-compression refrigerant technology (or air-conditioners). Air-conditioners remain the go-to solution for growing cooling demand, with other alternatives often overlooked. This incumbent technology has contributed to five barriers hindering the transition to sustainable cooling: (1) building policies based exclusively on energy efficiency; (2) a focus on temperature rather than other thermal comfort variables; (3) building-centric design of cooling systems instead of occupant-centric design; (4) businesses guided by product-only sales; and (5) lack of innovation beyond the standard operational phase of the incumbent technology. Opportunities and priority actions are identified for policymakers, cooling professionals, technicians and citizens to promote a transition towards sustainable cooling.
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    The role of supply chains for the sustainability transformation of global food systems: a large-scale, systematic review of food cold chains
    (Wiley, 2023-10-13) Trotter, Philipp A.; Becker, Tristan; Renaldi, Renaldi; Wang, Xinfang; Khosla, Radhika; Walther, Grit
    Global food systems need an urgent transformation to be compatible with sustainable development. While much of the recent academic discussion has focused on food production and consumption, food supply chains have received considerably less attention. Here, we conduct a large-scale, systematic literature review of 48,014 academic articles to assess the links between the food cold chain literature and sustainable development. We find a multitude of deep links between food cooling and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but also identify underexplored areas of sustainable food cooling research regarding its (1) goals, (2) analytical depth, and (3) context specificity: There is a limited understanding how several relevant synergies between SDGs can be captured, how to best design sustainable food cold chains across multiple value chain stages, and how to scale sustainable cold chains in low-income and lower-middle-income country contexts. We recommend to explicitly consider the salient interconnections between SDGs, increase the analytical depth by deploying more system-level approaches across entire value chains, and focus on localized solutions in contexts where food supply chains are most underdeveloped.
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    Sustainable cooling in a warming world: technologies, cultures, and circularity
    (Annual Reviews, 2022-09-02) Khosla, Radhika; Renaldi, Renaldi; Mazzone, Antonella; McElroy, Caitlin; Palafox-Alcantar, Giovani
    Cooling is fundamental to quality of life in a warming world, but its growth trajectory is leading to a substantial increase in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The world is currently locked into vapor-compression air conditioning as the aspirational means of staying cool, yet billions of people cannot access or afford this technology. Non–vapor compression technologies exist but have low Technological Readiness Levels. Important alternatives are passive cooling measures that reduce mechanical cooling requirements and often have long histories of local use. Equally, behavioral and cultural approaches to cooling play a vital role. Although policies for a circular economy for cooling, such as production and waste, recovery of refrigerants, and disposal of appliances, are in development, more efforts are needed across the cooling life cycle. This article discusses the knowledge base for sustainable cooling in the built environment and its significant, interconnected, and coordinated technical, social, economic, and policy approaches.