Held in Cairo, the policy training aimed to raise awareness of the need of a National Cooling Action Plan (NCAP) for Egypt. With presentations from Dr. Ezzat Lewis, Head of the Ozone Unit of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), and Cool Up, the session covered key topics such as Egypt’s current position on sustainable cooling, best practices for NCAP, and potential challenges. Discussions moderated by Dr. Ezzat Lewis, Dr. Omar Abdel‐Aziz from AUC and Prof. Hesham Safwat from ASHRAE, centered around the importance of promoting energy efficiency standards, developing a Monitoring, Verification, and Enforcement (MVE) mechanism to ensure compliance, and creating financial mechanisms to support sustainable cooling.

40 participants attended the meeting including Soha Taher and Tarek Shalaby from the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), Baher Elshaarawy from the Egyptian Prime Minister`s office, Omar Elbadawy from the Centre for Environment & Development for Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE), Ahmed El Dorghamy from the United Nations Human Settlements as well as other representatives from JICA, EOS, UNIDO and Zagazig University.

The event emphasized the importance of meeting international agreements such as the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol and the Paris Agreement. The training highlighted the need for a coordinated national strategy to drive Egypt’s transition towards sustainable cooling solutions.