Dubai District Cooling Study Tour and Workshop

Date: 15-17 July 2024

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), under the framework of the Cool Coalition and the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre, was organizing a three-day technical visit and workshop series on district cooling in the UAE. The visit brought together key stakeholders from multiple countries working on district cooling, and included:

• Technical visits to high-class and diverse district cooling projects across UAE.
• Dedicated workshops on national and local policy development with opportunities for presentations and exchanges by each country on their current and planned policy frameworks.
• Dedicated workshops on technology, business models and financing for district cooling, led by UNEP as well as local industry experts including Empower and Tabreed.

The mission yielded concrete results for participants from both UNEP-CCC and the national delegations of Morocco, Tunisia and Pakistan.

• Networking and capacity building sessions were fruitful, fostering discussion across the board. It allowed to develop a stronger partnership between UNEP-CCC and Tunisian stakeholders in particular.
• Sites visits organized jointly by Empower, Tabreed and UNEP-CCC shed light on the reality of district cooling implementation and was welcome by the national delegations.
• Best practices from the UAE companies Tabreed and Empower were shared with national stakeholders, to support replication in their own countries.
• The capacity building session by UNEP-CCC yielded positive feedback from private and public stakeholders, as well as opened possibilities for further collaboration on the ground for other projects.