India’s cooling action plan: Losing steam amidst surge in temperature, AC sales

The much-forgotten India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP) could not be more urgently resurrected back to memory than in 2024, which witnessed several record heat waves. In a two-part series, CarbonCopy reports on ICAP’s progressive idea of “thermal comfort for all”. Part one takes a look at how the extreme heat is forcing citizens to turn to expensive active cooling devices such as ACs. Thermal comfort in India, therefore, seems to be only for those who can afford it.

North India battled one of the lengthiest heat events (April to June, the longest on record) this year with temperatures touching nearly 50°C. Data on the exact number of heat-related deaths is not available, but the government says mortality rate per million for heat waves increased by 62.2% during the last four decades, mostly killing the poor living in window-less crowded homes, too poor to maintain thermal comfort due to the high costs of cooling. 

This mortality could have been avoided. Back in 2018, India announced a cooling action plan with the aim to make “thermal comfort” “affordable to all”. The India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP) was a first-of-its-kind initiative to be launched by a country globally to address cooling growth. It sought to cut emissions and reduce cooling demand across sectors by 20% to 25% by 2037-38. It also sought to reduce refrigerant demand by 25% to 30% by 2037-38, and cooling energy requirements by 25% to 40% by 2037-38. It recognised “cooling and related areas” as the main thrust of its research. It aimed to train and certify 100,000 servicing sector technicians by 2022-23. The ICAP document also recommended passive cooling measures such as implementation of residential and commercial building norms explained in detail in the Energy Conservation Building Code (revised in 2017), National Building Code and Eco-Niwas Samhita (Energy Conservation Buiding Code-Residential).

In 2024, however, one sees an increasing frequency and length of extreme heat events has pushed more and more people into opting for energy intensive active cooling measures of air conditioners, fans and air coolers, at extortionate costs, defying climate and social targets of efficiency and affordability, set in 2018.

On the whole, as this article will show, the plan, with no clear definition of “thermal comfort” or benchmark for energy efficiency measures for active as well as passive cooling, remains on paper. 

“A new AC every 15 seconds”

Compared to the rest of the world, India is just waking up to the idea of individual cooling consumption. The global average per capita energy consumption in space cooling is 272 kWh. The US has the highest per capita consumption (nearly 90% of U.S. households used air conditioning in 2020). India’s average per capita consumption in space cooling is merely 69kWh (used mostly by rich people), one of the lowest across the world, while it needs it the most considering the heat impacts. The ICAP document says only 8% of Indian households own air-conditioning units. But this is set to shoot up. According to state data, under a 2°C warming scenario, in the next 70 years, heat waves in India may become 30 times more frequent than now, and their duration (number of extremely hot days) may increase 200-fold. 

This year, Delhi spent almost 40 consecutive days with temperatures at or above 40°C. Future projections of temperature indicate a steady increase across the three periods (2030s, 2050s, 2080s), with anomalies reaching 4-5°C for high emission scenarios by 2080. The signs that energy choices need to change radically now to mitigate emissions and meet the cooling demand are writ large as heatwaves get lengthier and peak electricity demand grows ever higher. 

By 2050, China, India and Indonesia will together account for half of the world’s households with ACs, to survive. Not only will more people lose jobs to heat stress (World Bank projects India is likely to lose 34 million jobs, GDP up to $250 billion by 2030) but heat waves will diminish yields of crops such as wheat with deadly consequences. By 2037, the demand for cooling will grow eight times (a new AC every 15 seconds) in India leading to a 435% rise in annual emissions, the World Bank study warns. These aren’t luxury emissions, but those of survival.

This surge in AC sales, however, is creating wider knock-on effects.

Cooling targets vs the overloaded grid

The soaring air conditioner sales and their share of electricity has left the existing grid strained during summer months, forcing engineers to send out warnings of grid disturbance resulting in long power cuts. Last month, a brief power cut disrupted baggage claims and ACs at Delhi airport, but the poorer and rural areas around Delhi are putting up with power cuts every 10 minutes or the whole day. On June 11, an “unprecedented power failure” hit Delhi for hours, including central government buildings after a fire at a power plant in Mandola, Uttar Pradesh, possibly due to the intense heatwave conditions in Delhi-NCR.

High demand and the overload led to an “unprecedented” number of fire incidents in Delhi, including at a LED light manufacturing factory in Mundka, and at Chandni Chowk which destroyed over 200 shops. In May, when Delhi burned at 49.9°C, peak power demand hit 8,000MW. In Punjab, sales of air conditioners and coolers rose by 50% compared with last summer, power consumption increased by 43% in June compared with the same period last year. Things are no different in South India.

In Kerala this summer, engineers “abruptly” had grid management crises at hand when the peak electricity demand came dangerously close twice (5,646 MW on April 29 and 5,606 MW on May 1) to the maximum load of 5,850 MW the lines could carry. Viju Rajan the chief engineer in KSEBL’s transmission wing attributed it to the air conditioners and the charging of electric vehicles overnight. Kerala has witnessed exceptional sales of ACs (compared to usual 10,000-odd AC units sales in March, this year, March sales shot to the highest-ever 1.5 lakh units, according to news portal Manorama). The state also has the highest electric vehicle (EV) penetration rate in two-wheeler (19.5%) and passenger vehicles (6.4%) sections in the country. Last year, when the peak demand touched 5,024 MW, then a top KSEB official said Kerala grid could tackle consumption growth for at least the next five years. “It now looks like the future has arrived abruptly,” wrote the Manorama article. The KSEB self-defence mechanism called Automated Demand Management System (ADMS) automatically shuts the line leading to local power outages. Such outages have become a regular feature since April when temperatures began to rise.

So how does one handle such spikes?

A question of demand management?

The India Cooling Action Plan, is aimed at energy efficiency, but mostly of equipments, says CEEW research, pointing out that energy efficiency interventions primarily comprise appliance replacement or distribution encouraged by the Centre’s Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) and Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL). 

There are problems here. According to World Bank recommendations, governments—through target-based programmes—can increase the market share of 5-star refrigerators. But the Centre’s Interim Union Budget (presented in Feb 2024 to achieve net zero by 2070), allocations for efficiency were slashed: there was an over 50% reduction from $16 million last year to $8 million this year, in the allocation to schemes promoting energy conservation and energy efficiency in different sectors of the economy and to the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, mostly due to underutilisation of the allocations over the past two years (the $1,446 million allocated to produce energy-efficient trains marked a 21% increase over last year.)

The latest Budget 2024-25 has left things to the voluntary carbon market (VCM) to generate funds for energy efficiency for hard-to-abate sectors of cement and steel and also MSMEs. This is in contradiction to its own 2023-2024 Economic Survey Report, which warned that India’s export of carbon credits through the VCM will actually make emission reduction expensive and lead to double accounting.

For rooftop solar, the Budget allocation is ₹100 billion (up from ₹48 billion in 2023-24). The rooftop solar scheme is expected to translate to annual savings of almost ₹15,000 per household along with extra money for selling surplus electricity to the distribution companies, as per this ET report. The same report points out that the Budget has not clarified that households will have to pay a minimum of ₹20,000 with the additional payments for the net power supplied and consumed via the grid. Also, the budget speech was silent on major technical glitches with the national portal in the past that resulted in significant delays in rooftop installations and huge financial losses for the solar energy sector. The budget did not acknowledge or compensate for these failures. 

There are other problems as well. Energy efficient units in the market remain off-limits as taxes are as high as one pays for luxury goods. Consider this: A low-power consumption cooler costs ₹15,000-₹20,000, with 18% GST, while a high-power consumption AC is taxed the highest at 28% GST. Energy efficient 20W to 30W Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) fan costs as much as ₹5,000 (as opposed to ₹1,100 for a regular fan of 120W) and 12W LED light bulb costs ₹250 to ₹150. Indoor and electric fans can help to maintain thermal comfort, but these too are expensive to buy and inefficient.

The ICAP aims to cut emissions caused by the leakage of refrigerants in air conditioners through trained servicing staff which will prevent these leakages. A study has assessed that the refrigerant gases used presently in air-conditioning systems can lead to significant global warming. The study found that with about 10% leakage rate, R410A—an outdated refrigerant still in use in ACs—alone will be responsible for about 16% of total global warming by 2030. Inefficient R410A and R22 can still be found in the market.

The ICAP’s other target was to get 100,000 trained service technicians. By 2022, the government claimed up-skilling and certification of 43,450 Refrigeration and Air-conditioning (RAC) service technicians had been undertaken. In addition, 29,000 RAC service technicians were being trained as part of implementation of Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) phase out Management Plans under the Montreal Protocol. Considering the massive growth in supply of equipment, are these number of technicians enough? Technicians providing servicing at regular intervals are crucial to reduce energy consumption and mitigate climate change. The current servicing standards in the room air-conditioning segment need substantial improvement, says a CEEW study. Since the publication of the ICAP, a large-scale roll out of recommendations hasn’t happened yet, the report said.

According to this 2023 CEEW report, about 57% RAC technicians received their last training/skill workshop more than five years ago and 40% technicians had no formal training. Over 60% technicians reported little to inadequate knowledge about the new refrigerants. Over 65% technicians had no idea about the government schemes. About 70% technicians reported that customers call for servicing and maintenance only after the unit breaks down.

Looking beyond appliances

Shift the focus to other Demand Side Management (DSM) interventions, such as load shifting and demand response (DR), and you will find these are largely absent on the ground.

Such interventions means more than an automatic switch off during peak load to protect the grid. Researchers at CEEW suggest scaling up DSM through cost-effective integration of renewable energy such as solar and wind energy in the grid while maintaining supply reliability. DSM measures include energy efficiency, shifting load from peak to off-peak hours and influencing the load curve through technologies like distributed generation, energy storage and electric vehicles. However, CEEW research points out that DSM measures have not been implemented at scale in India so far. The paper says there is a need for regulation and enforcement of DSM through distribution companies’ (discoms) planning process. The paper adds that lack of expertise in discoms hinder DSM’s large-scale implementation. The report suggests regulators must update the rules enabling discoms to include DSM in resource adequacy plans. 

Therefore, the report says, poor enforcement of reliability standards lessens discoms’ incentives to implement DSM, and they use load shedding as the alternative. The CEEW researchers also found the staff lacking the necessary expertise to conduct/supervise technical potential and load research studies, cost-effectiveness tests etc. DSM cells are often inactive and contain staff for whom DSM is an ad hoc responsibility, researchers say.

The same study recommends that supporting grid-scale energy storage and demand-side management with renewable sources such as solar and wind is a cost-effective way to integrate variable RE (VRE). 

India aims to integrate at least 500 GW of non-fossil power generation capacity by 2030, of which about 400 GW will be renewable. The CEEW report points out DSM will be critical for cost-effective Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) integration. For instance, shifting load to solar hours from non-solar hours can help increase the utilisation of VRE sources. Modifying the load profile instead of treating it as a constraint can help integrate more RE sooner and with lower system costs and emissions.

There is a large question here. Two-thirds of India live on less than US$2 a day, and where the average cost of an air-conditioning unit can vary between US$260 and US$500, air-cooling systems are a luxury available only to a few. The ICAP acknowledges thermal comfort for all – provision for cooling for EWS and LIG housing. But ACs remain inaccessible to most of the Indian population. On the other hand, extreme heat is not even acknowledged as a disaster. As the first half of this report has shown, ACs are a suboptimal solution for other reasons as well such as their impact on the grid, etc. Another potential solution to meeting India’s cooling needs is passive cooling. But there are obstacles there as well as we will see in the Part 2 of this story.

Read Part 2 here.

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Moonis Ijlal

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