Cooling represents over 6% of the world’s total final energy consumption, and growing. Of the 2.8bn people living in hot tropical regions only 8% have air conditioners (ACs) – it’s 90% in the US and Japan. With growing affluence, most will buy cheap entry-level ACs, with their low efficiency and polluting refrigerants. To cope, India will need 600GW of new power generation capacity by 2050 – equivalent to the installation of 1,200 coal power plants. As Radhika Lalit and Ankit Kalanki of the Rocky Mountain Institute explain, it’s why this year India became the first major country in the world to develop a national policy document on cooling, the India Cooling Action Plan. The government is also supporting the Global Cooling Prize, which is looking for a “5X solution”: AC technology that has one fifth the climate impact of today’s most popular models, and will avoid hundreds of gigawatts in new energy generation.
Today, 40% of the world’s population resides within the hot tropical regions, where many of whom are exposed to potentially life-threatening temperatures for at least 20 days a year. Approximately 12,000 people die around the world annually due to heatwaves, and as our planet warms, these temperature surges are becoming more intense. Extreme heat often affects the most vulnerable populations, leaving them at risk. The World Health Organisation estimates that, by 2050, more than 255,000 people could be killed annually from extreme heat waves.
Access to cooling can be an effective means of preventing fatalities caused by extreme heat stress – but unfortunately, people living in tropical and sub-tropical regions have dramatically lower access to cooling.
ACs for 2.8bn people
Of the 2.8 billion people living in the hottest parts of the world, only 8% currently have air conditioners (ACs), compared with 90% of people in the US and Japan. Access to cooling in many parts of the world can no longer be considered a luxury. Especially for the most vulnerable members of society, cooling access is a climate justice and equality issue. Cooling is not only important for enhancing the productivity, health and wellbeing of people but can, in some cases, be necessary for survival.
Cheap ACs = potent refrigerants, energy inefficiency
Without a doubt, access to comfort cooling is critical for many communities around the world. However, the impacts of deploying entry-level air conditioners, which typically have low upfront cost, but use highly potent refrigerants and consume a lot of energy, could possibly be one of the largest end-use risks to our climate. The direct and indirect emissions from room ACs alone could contribute to as much as a 0.5 degree Celsius increase in global warming by 2100.
India’s challenge: cooling from 32°-45°C down to 18°C
India faces a daunting problem: how to provide access to cooling to its citizens without warming the planet. India has among the most cooling degree days in the world—more than 3,000 per year. A cooling degree day is a measurement designed to quantify the demand for energy needed to cool a building. It is the number of degrees that a day’s average temperature is above 65° Fahrenheit (18° Celsius), which is the temperature above which buildings need to be cooled. Summers in the northern and western parts of the country are already extremely hot, with average temperatures ranging from 89.6°F (32°C) to over 113°F (45°C).
But the heat is getting worse every year, and these temperatures could rise by up to a further 5.4 Fahrenheit degrees (3 Celsius degrees) in many cities by 2100, which would likely result in a doubling of the number of deaths from exposure to extreme heat waves. Studies also suggest that the cost to the Indian economy due to lost productivity from extreme heat would exceed $450 billion by 2030.
With these extreme heat events, the need for access to cooling should be viewed as a basic necessity – not just for health and productivity reasons but, in some cases, even for survival. While the household ownership of ACs in India today is a mere 7%, the demand for comfort cooling is expected to drive the total stock of room ACs to over 1 billion by 2050 – a 40-fold growth from 2016. To put this in perspective, of the roughly 290 million households in India, fewer than around 20 million have ACs. Growth in the demand for cooling will be dramatic, particularly in urban areas, due to the underlying need for a solution to the problem of heat stress. Rising temperatures, population growth and urbanisation are only going to worsen the problem of heat stress in cities.
Growing affluence means more cheap ACs
And with greater development and the rise of incomes of the middle class in the country, many more people in India will make their first purchases of ACs to provide a better quality of life for their families. It is likely, though, that they will buy the lowest-priced AC units on the market, without taking into consideration the operating costs or emissions from their operation. Unfortunately, the most popular lowest-priced room AC units on the market today are inefficient and, if deployed at scale, will further burden India’s already strained electricity system.
Air conditioning currently accounts for about around 40–60% of peak power demand in summers in the major Indian cities of Mumbai and New Delhi, where there is the greatest concentration of air-conditioned buildings. To operate the projected stock of room ACs in 2050, approximately 600 gigawatts of new power generation capacity would be needed – equivalent to the installation of 1,200 coal power plants of 500 megawatts each – which will require an investment of over $535 billion in new generation infrastructure.
The operation of these AC units will also have an impact on our climate. The emissions associated with their electricity consumption and refrigerants will only exacerbate the global temperature rise. Refrigerants – potent greenhouse gases – are the working fluids in an AC, which can leak during operation or get released into the atmosphere during servicing and replacement. While India contributes only 5% of the global annual emissions from room ACs today, in a business-as-usual scenario, India is predicted to account for over 25% of annual emissions globally by 2050 due to the unprecedented rise in comfort cooling demand, particularly in the residential sector.
India Cooling Action Plan: averting the energy crisis
The Indian government recognises people’s need for cooling and realises that an exponential rise in demand for cooling is inevitable, especially as such a rise is intrinsically tied to health and productivity outcomes. But it also understands the importance of meeting this need effectively and in a sustainable manner so that it does not result in runaway climate change or an energy crisis.
The government, at both the federal and state levels, is exercising political action. Ahmedabad, India, was the first city in South Asia to formulate a heat action plan after a devastating heat wave hit the city in 2010. By June 2017, 17 cities and 11 states across India had released or were developing heat action plans. In 2019, India became the first major country in the world to develop a national policy document on cooling, the India Cooling Action Plan, which provides a 20-year roadmap addressing India’s future thermal comfort and the cooling needs of its people in a sustainable manner.
To promote the adoption of more energy-efficient ACs, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency defines the minimum energy performance standards for ACs and has been raising this efficiency performance requirement at nearly 3% every year. It has also developed a star label system to help raise consumers’ awareness about room AC efficiency.
Superefficient, cheaper ACs
In addition, the Government of India’s energy services conglomerate, Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), which was created in 2009 as a joint venture of four national public-sector undertakings, is looking to aggregate demand for superefficient room ACs leveraging economies of scale to bring first costs closer to those of the standard-efficiency ACs being sold in the market today. EESL recently announced that it is partnering with BSES, a utility in Delhi, for a 12-month pilot programme that will look at deploying ACs that are 40% more efficient than, but priced comparably to, the three-star ACs currently available in the market. The pilot programme would cater to around 2.5 million residential and institutional consumers in Delhi.
Recognising that innovation is key to addressing India’s exponential cooling demand in a sustainable manner, the Government of India, through its Department of Science of Technology and other nodal ministries, is supporting the Global Cooling Prize. The prize envisions a “5X solution” – a cooling solution that has one-fifth of the climate impact of the commonly sold room AC units in the market today, taking into account both the grid-supplied electricity consumption and refrigerant global warming potential of the technology.
With rapid scaling and adoption of a superefficient and climate-friendly solution, India could avoid paying for nearly 400 gigawatts of new power generation capacity by 2050 – equivalent to saving nearly $380 billion, or a whopping 15% of India’s 2017 GDP. By switching its current and future room AC stock with a 5X solution, India could potentially mitigate up to 16 gigatons of cumulative carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2050.
This emissions reduction is equivalent to reducing the emission intensity of the Indian economy by 15% by the year 2030 from the 2005 levels, which could constitute nearly 40% of India’s Nationally Determined Contribution target. Moreover, with a 5X solution, every consumer can save money by using more efficient and climate-friendly AC. That money could be used to meet the other needs of Indian households, such as access to better education for children or better healthcare services for families.
By harnessing the power of innovation, India and the world will be able to provide access to cooling to all without warming our planet. To learn more about the Global Cooling Prize, click here.
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Radhika Lalit is a Manager with the Buildings Practice at the Rocky Mountain Institute
Ankit Kalanki is an Associate with the Buildings Practice at the Rocky Mountain Institute
This article is published with permission
Armin Eser says
Old Portuguese houses in Goa have high and thick walls and clay roof tyles. They are comfortable without AC. (AC = air conditioning)
Some foreigners in Goa prefer to live in these houses. However most Indians prefer concrete. It’s “modern”. Plain concrete roofs are affected by rain after a few years. Moreover they make the room underneath terrible hot. Clay tyles fixed above the concrete can protect from water damage, but such rooms are still terrible hot.
Ground plus first floor buildings of concrete are popular. The ground floor is cool, the first floor hot.
However if a clay tyles/ cement fibre/ metal sheet roof is fixed on pillars above the top slab in e.g. 1.8m hight (free ventilation) the room under the slab is cool.
I have no experience with small ventilation gaps, but snakes and rats can climb coconut palms. Also ants and other insects may like to make nests.
The most unbearable times are in April/ May 12 hours before a late afternoon rain. Which raises the question if temperature or humidity is the main problem?
There are substantial differences in micro climate. Within a few kilometers there can be areas very hot and other areas relatively cool. I know areas which have hardly any ACs and areas a few km away where most houses have ACs.
Just like in Europe politicians like their properties to increase in value and therefore keep an artificial shortage of housing plots.
(Housing is one area of “socialist” planning even in capitalist societies. No freedom to choose, as Milton Friedman would say.)
Unfortunately there is no practical solution to this problem.
Cheap water coolers are available which work on enthalpy of vaporisation.
Somewhere in Karnataka people used to built four rooms in a row. Ventilation of the middle two rooms were over tyles roof. The building were ground floor only and had neighboring houses attached both sides. As tyle roofs indicate poverty people try to rebuild these houses with concrete roofs. That’s a catastrophy for ventilation. Moreover it is very hot. As people don’t want to spend 700$ on a real AC they buy the cheap cooler.
That makes for hot and humid rooms without ventilation.
In poor villages in areas with hardly any trees (=costly beams) poor people afford thin steel sheets fixed on metal L-angles on relatively low walls. It’s a nightmare and in the hot season some people sleep outside.
It is often said that cooling needs fit to solar radiation. That may be true for office spaces, but I disagree for residential areas. In Goa people start their AC one hour or so before going to bed. Only the bedroom is cooled. A lot more heat can be tollerated if one is awake, but doesn’t have to work hard, than if one wants to sleep.
Factory buildings are usually very high. They use the same trick as old Portuguese houses in Goa. They do not usually have or need ACs.
Yes, India needs more cooling. But some people’s health doesn’t agree with air conditioning and a lot can be done without it. Even if an AC is required a few degrees cooling to decrease humidity might be enough in high humidity areas.
In dry areas I assume the same in combination with a water based cooler is good.
In Goa I visited the new house of an architect. Furniture was pushed in the middle of the room. When I asked why the mother told me that rain during strong wind enters the window.
If India wants to change their building style they have to experiment what works for their rain/ wind/ temperature/ humidity/ ventilation. Unfortunately just like with western toilet or safety helmets, they just copy the west, even though their circumstances (water instead of toilet paper) are different.
Instead of fixing 100 millions ACs or so Indian architecture/ civil engineering faculties need to gain knowledge.