With the past eight years on track to be the eight warmest on record, climate friendly cooling continues to be a topic of global discussion as the Executive Committee of Montreal Protocol's Multilateral Fund meets this week.

The Montreal Protocol has been instrumental in moving forward on climate friendly cooling through refrigerant transitions, and parties at the MLF meeting are deliberating on funding arrangements.

In this context, NRDC and The Energy and Resources Institute organized a side event, Mainstreaming HFC Transitions in Ensuring Access to Cooling in India, at the 34th MOP to think through top-down and bottom-up approaches to implement the ICAP and mainstream alternative low GWP refrigerants, opportunities for India to maximize HFC phase down gains, and ways of leveraging domestic and international sources of climate finance including the Multilateral Fund to support innovative cooling solutions.

Climate friendly cooling technologies are available today, but the market needs to be ready for adoption to ensure access and successful implementation. Moving forward on cooling at the sub-national level at state and city level will be critical for the implementation of the ICAP. For example, creating capacities and institutional strengthening at the state level could aid in cooling load reduction strategy implementation, as could state level roadmaps.

The side event concluded that India's cooling sector has already shown proactive action; with greater stakeholder collaboration and with a few smart and timely actions, India's industries cans support additional successful long term climate friendly cooling gains.