Keeping vaccines cold without electricity. Powering operating theatres with the sun. Bringing reliable energy to remote hospitals in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Malawi and Uganda. When SophiA started, many said it couldn’t be done. Today, solar-powered cooling and clean energy are running in health facilities across four African countries, and lives depend on them and are…
Two refrigeration technicians from the SophiA network, Elie Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso) and Alinafe Shumbah (Malawi), travelled to Nuremberg, Germany in the frame of SophiA Bridge project. Invited by Prof. Dr. Michael Kauffeld they attended Chillventa, the world’s leading trade fair for refrigeration, air conditioning, ventilation and heat pumps. They share what they saw, who they…
A solar-powered cold room is only as reliable as the technician who looks after it. To build those skills, SophiA is launching SOCRATES, the SophiA Online College for Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Thermal Energy Systems. Its first course starts on Tuesday 20 October 2026. Over the past years, SophiA has shown that off-grid, solar-powered cooling…
Around 50 guests from academia, industry, education and the public gathered at the OST campus in Rapperswil on 26 June 2026 to celebrate World Refrigeration Day and explore how sustainable cooling technologies contribute to climate action, resilient healthcare and the energy transition. The event highlighted the impact of the European research project SophiA Project, which…
Why refrigerant choice matters — and what it means for cold chain in underserved communities A May 2026 white paper by Hanon Systems (a Hankook Company) sheds new light on a growing environmental and public health concern: the refrigerant R1234yf, now standard in vehicle air conditioning across Europe, degrades almost completely into trifluoroacetic acid (TFA)…
