16 www. refrigerationandaircon. co. za RACA Journal I October 2026
REFRIGERANT TRANSITION business
GHANA’ S LEAP TO R290 IN A WARMING WORLD
By Eamonn Ryan
At the online Green Cooling Summit 2026 hosted by GIZ( Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), Joseph Baffoe of Ghana ' s Environmental Protection Authority discussed the transition to environmentally friendly refrigerants and appliances in Ghana.
In the heat of West Africa, where climate change is already pushing temperatures higher and electricity systems harder,
Ghana is attempting to rewrite the rules of how to cool itself. Rather than accept cheap, inefficient air conditioners as the inevitable price of development, the country is trying to leapfrog directly to high‐efficiency units using R290( Propane), a natural refrigerant with a fraction of the climate impact of conventional gases. It is not a pilot project in a laboratory or a boutique green initiative. It is an effort to reshape a mass market that is expanding at speed.
Ghana’ s air‐conditioning sector is booming. Around 400 000 units were imported in 2025 alone, a figure that captures both rising living standards and the brutal reality of hotter days and nights. Most of these units are fixed‐speed split systems at the budget end of the market: attractive to households and small businesses because of low upfront cost, but punishing in terms of electricity use and emissions. Cooling already accounts for a significant share of Ghana’ s national greenhouse gas emissions, and the sector consumes about 5.5TWh of electricity a year, a figure projected to roughly double by 2050 if the current trajectory continues. For a country that still grapples with power generation challenges, the idea of doubling cooling‐related demand by mid‐century is not an academic concern. It is a live risk to grid stability, energy security and economic growth.
FROM CHEAP SPLITS TO A NEW COOLING ECOSYSTEM The easy option would be to let the market run and deal with the consequences later – build more power plants, reinforce networks, look for efficiency gains at the margins. Instead, Ghana has chosen to confront the problem at its source: the technology and refrigerants used in its AC stock. As a signatory to the Montreal Protocol and a country with climate commitments embedded in its nationally determined contributions, it has elected to use the current phase‐down of high‐GWP refrigerants as an opportunity to jump, not shuffle, to the next stage. The goal is straightforward in concept but challenging in execution: transition the market to R290 air conditioners, paired with variable‐speed technology, in order to cut both direct emissions from refrigerants and indirect emissions from electricity generation. By 2030, the policy vision is that R290 units should account for around 70 % of the mix.
Technician training is one of the central pillars. Over the past decade, Ghana’ s National Ozone Unit and partners such as GIZ have trained more than a thousand air‐conditioning technicians, with several hundred of those trained specifically under green cooling projects that focus on R290. The content addresses the realities of working with a flammable refrigerant in crowded urban environments: safe installation, leak prevention, appropriate tools and emergency procedures. Importantly, this is now evolving from ad hoc capacity building into a formalised profession. A national certification scheme is being rolled out that will require technicians to sit an exam and obtain a certificate to work on these systems. For a sector that has long been dominated by informal or semi‐formal tradespeople, this step towards mandatory competence standards is significant.
BUILDING LOCAL CAPABILITY: TRAINING, ASSEMBLY AND END‐OF‐LIFE CONTROL On the supply side, Ghana has run into the same concerns that often arise whenever flammable refrigerants are discussed. Several of the manufacturers the country hoped to import from – particularly in China, where many RAC products are made – were initially reluctant to ship R290 units into a market they perceived as risky. The problem was not a lack of technical ability to produce the equipment, but doubts about whether local installation and servicing would be robust enough to avoid incidents.
A central plank of its new approach is a move from simple importation to local assembly of R290 air conditioners. Supported by initiatives such as the Green Cooling programme and funding from international climate finance, Ghana is working towards establishing an assembly line that could be the first of its kind
16 www. refrigerationandaircon. co. za RACA Journal I October 2026