Solar-powered refrigerators can reduce carbon footprints 

Countries, organisations and individuals across the world are looking for proactive ways to tackle the climate change and reduce carbon footprints. One such way is the recently developed solar-powered refrigerators and expanding it as a system of ‘food cold chains’ worldwide.  

In fact, if solar-powered refrigerators are installed in every corner of the world, especially in the developing countries, it will help reduce food loss and waste. This in turn will not only make economies less productive and the population hungrier, but also harm the earth in the process. Wondering how? Well, the waste food will end up in the landfills, burning which will release huge amounts of methane, a harmful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. In fact, what’s shocking is that, food waste leads to a massive carbon emission, right behind China, USA and India. As much as 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted every year globally. Now with the rising population, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that by 2050, more than half of the world will suffer from acute shortage of food and hunger.  

The solution? Well, for starters, nations need to join hands and increase their food production by more than 70 percent and also curb any and all loss of food. Another way is of course introducing sustainable food storage systems such as solar-powered refrigerators.  

Currently, the existing refrigerators are not environment-friendly as they emit hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs which are powerful and toxic greenhouse gases. Not only that, it requires electricity to run that are in turn generated using fossil fuels; thus, further worsening the climate crisis.  

In such a scenario, solar-powered refrigerators and a system of cold chains that operate on renewable energy and even use alternative refrigerants come as a welcome change with minimum climate ramifications.  

For those who are still wondering about the benefits of installing such worldwide cold chains, let us tell you how food travels from the farm where it is harvested to your dinner table. At each stage, the food has to sit for a long period which means that they need to be stored properly, at a suitable temperature to save it from spoilage and contamination. To put this into perspective, in 2021, 700 million people suffered from worldwide hunger, most of them based at countries or regions with minimal cold storage capacity. Furthermore, there are many food products such as milk, meat and vegetables, out of which 30 percent often perish before reaching the consumers.   

In fact, in 2019, India’s Ministry of Food Processing Industries had estimated that the nation had incurred a loss of 56 million tonnes of food, worth 10 billion rupees, simply due to lack of suitable cold storage. Alarming, isn’t it?  

Therefore, you can understand how eco-friendly measures such as spreading solar-powered refrigerators globally can have positive impacts on the society. Apart from lowering climate impacts, expanding cold chains can also increase incomes (farmers can now invest in post-harvest activities too, thus, enhancing their profits), control land degradation and of course reduce greenhouse emissions.  

Experts believe that the sub-Saharan Africa should be the first region to introduce such food cold chains to ensure maximum results. No wonder, the United Nations Environmental Programme has organised the ‘Global Cool Coalition’ initiative, and has declared this region as an ideal location to kick off their project.