IIR calls for national refrigeration committees

FRANCE: To mark World Refrigeration Day, the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR) is calling for refrigeration to be recognised as critical infrastructure for health, food security, energy efficiency and climate sustainability. 

The IIR also urges governments to establish national refrigeration committees – cross-sectoral platforms to coordinate sustainable refrigeration efforts across applications, from cryogenic technologies and ultra-low temperature uses, to food and health cold chains, air conditioning and heat pumps. 

“These committees should bring together all relevant stakeholders, ensuring that the full range of actors, public and private, technical and policy, are involved in shaping effective and inclusive national refrigeration strategies,” the IIR says. 

It sees these efforts as essential to strengthening food systems, public health, industrial development, and climate action.

As the scientific, independent intergovernmental organisation for the development of refrigeration, the IIR is also calling on more countries to join its mission and actively support global efforts to elevate refrigeration to the top of national and international agendas – “recognising the refrigeration sector as a vital enabler of sustainable development and climate resilience”.

The IIR statement echoes the outcomes from the 2025 World Refrigeration Day high-level event that it hosted on 18 June in Paris. 

The theme of the event – which attracted over 170 government, industry, scientific, and international organisation representatives from more than 60 countries – was that refrigeration was core infrastructure and no longer a side issue.

“This is the decade where sustainable refrigeration will shape our societies. Let’s be visionary, let’s be disruptive, and let’s be inclusive,” said IIR director general Yosr Allouche.