excessive use of water as well in its designs, he says.
The firm hopes to win an innovation in low-carbon cooling award to be presented in July by Ashden, a
London-based charity focused on sustainable energy.
“The climate emergency means higher temperatures are now a fact of life, and so people are turning up the
air conditioning, completing a vicious circle” as they use more energy to stay cool, says Harriet Lamb,
Ashden’s CEO.
“The world must wake up to this new reality and urgently invest in sustainable solutions,“ she says. ”We
cannot sit back and wait for the next lethal heatwave to arrive – we need action now.”
Other Egyptian firms also are looking at innovative cooling.
KarmSolar, a solar and technology integration company, for instance, is working through a subsidiary in
another village in Bahariya Oasis to employ wind-catchers, hot-air extractors, and strategic placement of
doors and windows for natural cooling.
As Egypt’s population grows and more people move from rural to urban communities, demand for cooling
and warming devices has increased by about 30 per cent over a decade, says Saber Osman, head of the
Ministry of Environment’s climate change adaptation department.
But staying cool in Egypt is getting more expensive. The government has carried out a staged series of hikes
in electricity prices since 2016, as it phased out fossil fuel subsidies in an effort to cut budget deficits.
With more Egyptians struggling to pay for air conditioning, finding ways to create more efficient, energy-
smart cooling is important, and may need to include requiring air conditioning manufacturers to produce
more energy-efficient machines, officials say.
Reuters