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No, we are independently funded and politically agnostic.

If you’re interested in partnering with Go25degrees, please email management@go25degrees.org with details of how we could work together to achieve our vision of “One billion people to Go25degrees by 2025”.

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All we ask is that you give it your best shot. If for any reason you’d like a divorce (un-pledge), there are no bad feelings. Using the contact form at the bottom of our website, please type “un-pledge” and be sure to use the same email address you used to sign up. We will deduct your pledge from the global count at the end of each month. Thanks for trying!

By pledging, you’re taking some basic accountability for your reducing your electricity costs, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and improving general productivity. You’re also committing to educate others on the win-win-win of increasing your AC to 25°C.

The easiest method is to pledge your support and educate your friends and colleagues too!

You can also apply to work, volunteer, partner or offer philanthropic funding.

For more details, see this link Get Involved

As the world warms, the demand for air conditioners accelerates, creating a vicious cycle. We are heating the world by trying to cool it down!

There is a local warming effect from air-conditioning, especially in large cities. Like a fridge, air conditioners take heat from the inside of a building or car, then transfer it to the warm outside. That extra heat makes cities hotter, raising night-time temperatures by up to 2°C, which then encourages people to turn up their air conditioning even higher.

The IEA estimates there could be an extra 4 billion air conditioners around the world by mid-century, which alone could push up the world’s temperature by more than half a degree.

Air-conditioners produce greenhouse gases in two ways.

1. They are responsible for a share of the CO2 generated in the power stations that produce the electricity they run on. In 2018, according to the IEA, it takes about 2,000 terawatt hours (TWhs) of electricity to run all the world’s cooling machines for a year. This produces 4bn tons of CO2, 12% of the global total. Without drastic improvements in air-conditioners’ demand and efficiency, the IEA reckons, they will be burning up 6,000 TWhs (approx. 600 coal-fired power plants) by 2050.
2. Air-conditioners use so-called “F gases” (such as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs) as refrigerants. When—as is common—the machines leak in use or on disposal, these gases escape, doing vast damage. HFCs trap between 1,000 and 9,000 times as much heat as the same amount of CO2, meaning they are much more potent causes of global warming. On this basis, Paul Hawken of Project Drawdown, a think-tank, calculates that improving air-conditioners could do more than anything else to reduce greenhouse gases.

One of the simplest, if not the simplest, is increasing your Air Conditioner setting. This is closely followed by putting your AC system on a timer and turning it off overnight or on the weekends.

Alternatively, you can opt to use renewable electricity to power your building, or upgrade to a super-efficient AC system.

The most economical setting is “off”. However, if AC is “necessary”, the most economical temperature will be that closest to the ambient temperature outside. For example, in Malaysia where the average daytime temperature is 29°C, the most economical setting would be 28°C, though this may not be acceptable to those being cooled. We recommend 25°C as the best balance between economy, environment, comfort and productivity.

The female hormone oestrogen contributes to this because it slightly thickens the blood, reducing the flow to capillaries that supply the body’s extremities. This means that, in women, blood flow to the tips of fingers and toes tends to shut off more readily when it is cold. Research has shown that women tend to feel colder around ovulation when estrogen levels are high.

The body’s metabolism also plays a role, as this dictates how quickly heat energy is produced and on average, women have a lower metabolic rate than men. In simple terms, higher muscle mass tends to translate to higher resting metabolism, which is linked to burning more calories and higher blood flow, both of which help keep the extremities warm.

The latest research states that not only are women more comfortable at higher temperatures, they are also significantly more productive.

Women perform best at 28°C compared to men at 21°C. The sweet spot according to the latest research is 24-26°C where both sexes do equally well.

Your most productive temperature depends on the ratio of men and women in your organisation.

Men perform best at lower temperatures (21°C) compared to women (28°C). The sweet spot according to the latest research is 24-26°C where both sexes perform equally well.

Overall, 25°C (or 77°F) provides the greatest balance of human productivity, energy efficiency and environmental impact.

In terms of employee productivity, the latest research suggests that contrary to earlier studies, employees working in 25°C are no less productive than those in 21°C. In fact, more recent findings suggest that, in mixed-gender workplaces, temperatures should be set much higher than current standards to increase productivity, somewhere between 24-26°C.

Furthermore, increasing the temperature from 21°C to 25°C will save an average of 24% off your electricity costs and cut 12% off your greenhouse gas emissions assuming the ambient temperature outside is above 25°C.

Benefits will vary depending on your country’s electricity pricing, ambient temperature, humidity, appliance efficiency, business type and air conditioner usage.

Even without a thermostat, trained operators can quickly increase the settings of most air conditioning systems and units. In may take longer than a few seconds but the benefits will greatly outweigh the costs.

Go25degrees is targeting tropical countries. On days where the ambient is below 25°C, we recommend matching the outside temperature from 18-25°C, and possibly implementing heating at any temperature below that.

Hospital operating rooms are also advised to be kept at 18-20°C.

It’s usually very simple.

Firstly, sign your pledge

Secondly, turn up the thermostat temperature to 25 degrees. You may need the help of your facilities manager and maintenance team to help. We recommend increasing one degree per day so people can slowly acclimatise.

Follow this link for a ready-made implementation kit that includes instructions, marketing and communications materials. Link to Corporates, Institutions and Hotels.

By setting your air conditioning temperature to 25°C degrees, you are effectively creating a default.

Defaults are generally sustainable because they involve:

• Cognitive or physical effort to find the remote or thermostat, or get permission from the facilities manager or boss to change the temperature
• Switching costs because decreasing the temperature will lead to spending more money on electricity, increasing your impact on the environment and potentially impacting productivity
• Loss aversion to reputational damage if people get angry over their usual temperature being changed

One of the simplest and most robust findings from behavioural economics is that when people are faced with a choice, they tend to stick with the default option. For example, most countries have an option for people to donate their organs upon their death. In America, the default choice is to not donate organs, meaning they must specifically check a box on a form (an “opt-in” system). As a result, the consent rate is only about 28%. In contrast, Belgium’s default option is to donate organs (an “opt-out” system), in which about 98% of the population consent to donation.

• Supermarkets do not provide plastic bags for free
• Restaurants only give you a plastic straw if you ask for one
• Airlines let you drink directly from the can, unless you ask for a plastic cup
• Businesses have set their printers to copy double-sided as the default
• Hotels don’t change your sheets and towels, unless you specifically request it
• Boarding passes automatically come to your smartphone unless you ask for one to be printed
• Electronic billing is the norm unless you request a paper bill
• Collecting recyclables every week but garbage only twice per month

The most famous example is organ donation, but the use of defaults has penetrated all facets of our lives. Others include:

Positive examples:

• Pensions. Vanguard reported that automatically enrolling new employees in a retirement plan more than doubled participation rates.
• Healthy Eating. Walt Disney World for example, changed the default choices in its kids’ meals–swapping out soda for juice and french fries for fruits and vegetables–leading to the consumption of 21% fewer calories, 44% less fat, and 43% less sodium.

Negative Examples::

• Banking. When banks began offering overdraft protection for checking account customers, they set the default to “opt-out”. Overdraft and insufficient funds fees accounted for about 75% of total checking account fees and averaged over $250 per year for consumers who had accounts that included overdraft protection by default.
• Privacy. When downloading an app, the highlighted option is usually “accept” rather than “do not accept”. This leads people to skip over the finer details of the permissions you are granting the app.

The default effect is the phenomenon where making an option the default among a set of choices greatly increases the likelihood of it being chosen.

Default options are pre-set courses of action that take effect if nothing is specified by the decision-maker, and setting defaults is an effective nudge when there is inertia or uncertainty in decision making. Since defaults do not require any effort by the decision-maker, defaults can be a simple but powerful tool when there is inaction. When choices are difficult, defaults may also be perceived as a recommended course of action. Requiring people to opt-out if they do not wish to donate their organs, for example, has been associated with higher donation rates.

• The International Energy Agency
• United4efficency
• United Nations Environment Programme
• India Power Ministry

Electricity bill savings and emissions reductions are estimated using average national AC efficiency, average national tariff, renewable energy mix and average national ambient temperature. Results may vary according to unit efficiency, local tariffs and temperatures.