Suggested citation: Willem Vriesendorp, Anastasia O’Rourke, Ethan Olim, Selin Gören, Sage Wen, Bending the curve: Cost-effective cooling emissions reduction pathways for commercial real estate in China and the U.S. Carbon Containment Lab, 2026.

The cooling sector’s climate impacts are often ignored, an ugly duckling of sustainability plans and emissions accounting. But with the sector’s landscape changing fast and the world hurtling towards 2℃ of warming, we can’t afford to continue flying blind on cooling emissions. To give stakeholders much-needed information about cooling’s climate impact and viable emissions reduction pathways, the CC Lab is now publishing Bending the Curve: Cost-effective cooling emissions reduction pathways for commercial real estate in China and the U.S. Download it by scrolling down.

Several macro trends in the cooling sector make this report particularly timely. Global cooling demand is expected to more than double by 2050, driven by economic development and a warming climate, pushing up demand for both refrigerant gases and electricity. At the same time, implementation of the Kigali Amendment globally and the AIM Act in the U.S. is forcing shifts towards more climate-friendly refrigerants and cooling equipment. This is creating uncertainties up and down the value chain of cooling while other macroeconomic shifts are making electricity prices less predictable than ever.

Bending the Curve, the result of a multi-year collaboration between five authors and more than sixty contributors across four continents. We zoom in on the commercial real estate sector in the U.S. and China. This focus was chosen because of its size, the climate commitments many players in it have made, and the potential to affect significant emissions reductions. Built on a fully original model, the report represents an effort to quantify cooling-related emissions from commercial real estate and the climate and financial impacts of opportunities to abate them. It provides a data-driven foundation with which building owners, policymakers, and other stakeholders can chart their own mitigation pathways.

One key finding is that commercial real estate emissions are significant. We estimate that the sector in the U.S. and China is on track for 12.8 billion metric tons of CO2-equivalent (MTCO2e) greenhouse gas emissions over our study period of 2026 to 2060. This is a number equivalent to approximately twice total U.S. emissions in 2022. 79% of these emissions are from China, where electricity emissions dominate due to a coal-intensive grid; in the U.S., emissions are roughly evenly split between refrigerant leakage and venting and electricity.

Another key finding is that 5.7 billion MTCO2e of these emissions can be abated for less than $100 per MTCO2e. This figure, representing 45% of cumulative emissions, was calculated by analyzing eighteen abatement measures across property types. Perhaps even more significantly, 3.7 billion MTCO2e are financially attractive to abate, meaning that measures to abate these emissions have an internal rate of return above 8%.

We believe that the report has numerous important implications for stakeholders across the cooling and commercial real estate. For example, the report shows the importance of taking a systems approach—considering demand, cooling load, weather, and equipment in concert can unlock savings that would never be possible otherwise. Additionally, the two largest financially attractive abatement opportunities, control upgrades and maintenance and operations improvements, rely on data, emphasizing the importance of newer technology that enables accurate and rapid responses to real-time conditions. 

The next decade is critical. Because of the long lifespan of cooling equipment and the current boom in demand, decisions made in the coming years will drive emissions trajectories for decades. Stakeholders can and should act now to reduce their cooling emissions, cut operational costs, and allay other important concerns such as energy security.