During periods of hot weather, demand for cooling - from apartments, offices, schools, and stores to vehicles - rises alongside the pace of urban life. Yet behind the comfort of a cool room lies a larger story: the hotter cities become, the greater the demand for cooling, and rising electricity consumption puts additional pressure on energy systems and can drive higher greenhouse gas emissions when electricity generation remains dependent on fossil fuels.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), global cooling demand could rise from around 22 TW in 2022 to 68 TW by 2050 under a business-as-usual scenario, while greenhouse gas emissions associated with cooling could increase from around 4.1 to 7.2 GtCO2e (gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent). Under a sustainable cooling scenario, emissions in 2050 could fall to around 2.6 GtCO2e.
This also marks a new chapter in efforts to protect the ozone layer. After decades of phasing out ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol, the Kigali Amendment, adopted in 2016, expanded the refrigeration industry’s transition toward gradually reducing HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) with high global warming potential. The shift to low global warming-potential (GWP) refrigerants therefore needs to go hand-in-hand with reducing cooling demand and improving the energy efficiency of equipment, buildings, and systems as a whole.
Urban heat and the cooling challenge
Vietnam is facing rapidly-growing cooling demand. Urbanization, rising living standards, and a hot and humid climate have made air conditioning essential in many households and buildings.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) and several recent studies, Vietnam’s residential air conditioning market currently stands at around 2.5-3 million units a year, with inverter models accounting for more than 80 per cent of the market. Between 2020 and 2025, around 600 models were registered for energy labeling. The adoption of TCVN 7830:2021 and the new energy-efficiency management roadmap are creating an important shift.
The MoIT says the efficiency of four and five-star products under the new standard is around 25-29 per cent higher than before. The electricity-saving potential from improving air conditioner efficiency is estimated at around 7.79-20.79 TWh per year.
That represents significant savings. Yet the efficiency of air conditioners is only part of the story. Even an efficient unit can consume substantial amounts of electricity if it operates in a building that absorbs too much heat, has a poorly insulated envelope, or is operated inefficiently. There is an interesting paradox: sometimes, the best way to save electricity on air conditioning is to reduce the need to turn it on in the first place.
Beyond cooling for homes, offices, hotels, and commercial buildings, reliable cooling for high-tech infrastructure is becoming increasingly important. Data centers, cleanrooms, semiconductor plants, electronics manufacturing facilities, and technology research centers all require highly-reliable cooling systems that operate almost continuously. In data centers, cooling systems must maintain appropriate temperature and humidity levels to protect equipment and ensure stable 24/7 operations.
In semiconductor and electronics manufacturing, controlling temperature, humidity, cleanliness, and air quality in cleanrooms is essential. As a result, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) systems can be far more complex than those in conventional office buildings.
As Vietnam develops its digital economy, data centers, electronics, and semiconductor industries, cooling demand will not only grow in volume but also change in nature. This will become a highly-technical market, creating demand for a new generation of engineers, technicians, and businesses capable of integrating HVAC with energy, controls, data, automation, and environmental technologies. In that sense, the cooling story is expanding from “cooling people” to “cooling the economy.”
Beyond air conditioning
At the building level, orientation, shading, roof and wall insulation, glazing choices, natural ventilation, and spatial design can all reduce cooling loads. If the amount of heat entering a building can be reduced from the outset, air conditioning systems will require less capacity, operate for shorter periods, and consume less electricity.
At the urban scale, this is the principle behind the “Urban Cooling” approach: combining urban planning, nature-based solutions, building design, energy efficiency, and cooling technologies. Rather than simply increasing cooling capacity, cities also need to reduce the amount of heat that buildings and urban areas have to absorb.
Where cooling demand remains high, high-efficiency equipment continues to play an important role. Inverter air conditioners, high-efficiency compressors, variable-speed fans and pumps, VRF/VRV (Variable Refrigerant Flow/Variable Refrigerant Volume) systems, high-efficiency chillers, smart controls, and building management systems (BMS) can help reduce energy consumption throughout a building’s lifecycle.
But the green transition should not stop at buying new equipment. Real-world efficiency depends heavily on system design, capacity selection, installation quality, operation, maintenance, and repair.
A key issue that cannot be separated from energy efficiency is refrigerants. Equipment with high energy efficiency but refrigerants with high global warming potential, or systems that allow significant refrigerant leakage, cannot be considered a fully green cooling solution.
In Vietnam, Decision No. 496/QD-TTg, issued on June 11, 2024, on the national plan for managing and phasing out ozone-depleting substances and controlled greenhouse gases, provides an important link between refrigerant policy and the green transition in the cooling sector. The legal framework has since been further developed through Decree No. 119/2025/ND-CP, Decree No. 83/2026/ND-CP, and Circular No. 08/2025/TT-BNNMT.
A “green” cooling system therefore needs to be assessed across its entire lifecycle: from cooling demand and energy efficiency to refrigerant selection, leak prevention during operation and maintenance, and the recovery, reuse, recycling, reclamation, or disposal of refrigerants when equipment reaches the end of its life.
Green cooling transition
Viewed as a whole, the green transition in refrigeration and air conditioning is taking shape around three closely linked pillars: Reducing cooling demand 1 Improving energy efficiency 1 Managing refrigerants, shifting to lower-climate-impact alternatives, and managing refrigerants throughout their lifecycle.
The challenge ahead is not only to strengthen policies, but to implement them in a coordinated and effective manner. Urban planning and construction policies can reduce cooling demand through passive design and nature-based solutions; energy policies can promote high-efficiency equipment and systems; technology-transition policies can support the adoption of refrigerants that do not use HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons) and the phase-down of HFCs; and financial policies can help businesses and households overcome the upfront costs of investment.
The green transition in refrigeration and air conditioning is not simply about reducing electricity consumption. It is also creating a new value chain.
This also means a growing need to train a new workforce. Future technicians will need to do more than install and repair equipment. They will also need to understand energy efficiency, the properties and safety requirements of low-GWP refrigerants, leak prevention and detection, refrigerant recovery, and operational data management. The green transition is therefore also a skills transition, creating opportunities for green jobs in refrigeration and air conditioning, particularly as cooling demand expands into data centers, electronics, semiconductors, healthcare, and high-tech industries.
New approach
To prevent cooling from becoming a cycle of ever-rising energy consumption, Vietnamese cities need to move from fragmented solutions toward integrated cooling management.
First, cooling demand needs to be incorporated into urban planning and management, rather than treated solely as a need to be addressed at the building or household level. Second, cities should promote an “efficiency first” principle in building design and retrofits: reduce heat loads first, then optimize mechanical and electrical systems and equipment.
Third, minimum energy performance standards and the effectiveness of energy-labeling programs should continue to be strengthened, alongside testing capacity and market surveillance. Fourth, infrastructure should be developed for the recovery and management of refrigerants at the end of equipment’s life cycle.
And finally, mechanisms such as green credit, energy service companies (ESCOs), energy-performance contracts, and building-retrofit support programs can help bridge the gap created by upfront investment costs.
Against the backdrop of Politburo Resolution No. 27-NQ/TW, issued on August 28, 2026, which calls for modern urban systems and integrated, smart, green, and resilient infrastructure as part of national spatial development, urban cooling should increasingly be viewed as part of urban planning and development quality, not simply an issue for the refrigeration and air conditioning sector.
Ten years after the Kigali Amendment was adopted, the effort to protect the ozone layer is entering a new phase, in which the phase-down of HFCs needs to go hand-in-hand with improving energy efficiency and meeting growing cooling demand. For Vietnam, this is not only about fulfilling its commitments under the Montreal Protocol but also an opportunity to drive technological innovation, strengthen human resources, and develop a higher-value cooling industry.
(*) Associate Professor Trinh Quoc Dung is from the Faculty of Thermal Energy at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Hanoi University of Science and Technology
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