Mission and objectivesThe UNDP Sustainable Energy Hub is a network of partners that work alongside countries to transform energy systems though an integrated agenda focused on the policy, technology and financial shifts that shape sustainable economic development. We help countries build net-zero, people-centered societies driven by a just, sustainable energy transition. Our core principle is to promote an integrated agenda that supports energy for development, including by mobilizing partners to enable 500 million additional people to have access to sustainable, reliable, affordable energy by 2025, leaving no-one behind. The global transformation of energy systems has already started, but is being altered by the current geopolitical context. However, this transformation must be accelerated, and it must be done in a way that advances the Sustainable Development Goals. The Sustainable Energy Hub is UNDPโs answer to these challenges. To drive the systems-level change needed, the Sustainable Energy Hub aims to bring about a completely new way of thinking, doing business, connecting people and knowledge. UNDPโs 2022-2025 Strategic Plan has put sustainable energy at the heart of a joint corporate mission, and UN-Energy has pledged to reaching key energy milestones by 2025. UNDP will focus efforts on mobilizing partners and catalzing action to provide access to sustainable, affordable, and reliable energy โ both electricity and clean cooking โ to 500 million people by 2025, focusing on the worldโs poorest communities. UNDP will not do this alone โ our role here is to mobilize strong, meaningful, impactful partnerships to deliver action on the ground. We aim to bring about a new way of thinking about energy and advocate for an integrated, inclusive approach, where all stakeholders participate meaningfully in its design.
ContextThe Energy Cooling Preparedness Index (E-CPI) is a UNDP Sustainable Energy Hub initiative to benchmark countriesโ readiness to meet growing cooling needs. It covers 113 countries using indicators across institutional, infrastructural and meteorological factors. A key gap identified in the first draft of the index is the limited depth of data on national cooling policies, building standards and related legal frameworksโmost of which are currently coded as binary (0/1). To address this, UNDP is recruiting a team of volunteers to strengthen and enrich the policy data layer of the E-CPI, so that the index reflects not just the presence of policies but their type, strength, inclusiveness and implementation status.
Task DescriptionEach volunteer will be responsible for approximately 15-20 countries, depending on data availability. Working with the UNDP Sustainable Energy Hub, volunteers will collect, verify and code national-level cooling policies, standards and related measuresโincluding National Cooling Action Plans (NCAPs) as well as cooling provisions embedded in energy, climate or efficiency plans - to deepen the โPolicy Indicatorsโ and โLegal and Regulatoryโ dimensions of the E-CPI. This work will involve auditing and annotating relevant policies, then extracting and recording in a structured template: the legal instrument (law, regulation, policy, voluntary guideline), date of adoption or latest update, status (planned, adopted, under implementation), binding nature and enforcement mechanisms, explicit targets or metrics (efficiency improvements, refrigerant phase-down dates, cooling access goals), gender and equity provisions (including references to vulnerable groups), responsible agency or ministry, financing mechanisms (dedicated funds, subsidies, blended finance), and integration with international commitments such as the Kigali Amendment or the Paris Agreement, as well as any monitoring and evaluation provisions. Volunteers will compile these data into a shared database showing the presence, type, strength and inclusiveness of each instrument. They will also identify and briefly document good practices or case studies of robust national cooling regulation. Because many policies are not yet in English or listed in global databases, volunteers will follow a simple source-triangulation protocol, record โsource confidenceโ for each entry, and flag missing or ambiguous data for follow-up. Throughout, they will ensure consistent coding across countries and maintain metadata on sources to guarantee reliability and comparability. The outcome will be an enriched, quality-checked dataset on national cooling policies and standards that enables new visualizations analysis of binding versus non-binding measures, gender responsiveness, financing mechanisms, implementation status and international alignment, providing a much more actionable picture of national cooling readiness.
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