Air-conds turning up the heat
Rise in demand for cooling appliance makes global warming worse
BEHROR: Ratan Kumar once battled India’s brutal summers with damp bedsheets and midnight baths. Now he is among millions upon millions of Indians using air conditioning (air-cond) – helping make the world hotter still.
With India’s air-cond market expected to explode from 30 million to a billion units by 2050, the world’s second-most populous country could become the planet’s top user of electricity for cooling.
India is already the number-three spewer of greenhouse gases, burning through 800 million tonnes of coal every year – and the predicted air-cond boom could mean the country would have to triple its electricity production to meet demand, experts say.
But for the hundreds of millions of Indians enduring scorching, even deadly, summers, the air conditioners are a godsend.
“Summers make our life miserable,” said Kumar, a 48-year-old laundryman earning US$225 (RM936) a month who this year installed an air-cond unit in his two-room house in the town of Behror in the baking-hot desert state of Rajasthan.
“Sleeping for few hours is a struggle after a day’s hard work,” the father of two said, running a hot iron over crumpled clothes. “I am not rich but we all aspire to a comfortable life.”
Vast swathes of India endure a gruelling four-month long summer, and the mercury has been inching ever higher in recent years.
In 2016, the Earth’s hottest on record, temperatures in the Indian
51° town of Phalodi soared to C, the highest recorded in India.
The brutal heat can melt tarmac and puts millions of people at risk, with nearly 2,500 victims perishing from sunstroke in 2015.
Currently, just 5% of Indian households are equipped with aircond compared to 90% in the United States and 60% in China, up from virtually zero 30 years ago.
But India’s air-cond market is catching up fast, seeing double-digit growth in the last decade as incomes rise and electricity supplies become more reliable.
“It’s no longer a luxury product but a necessity,” said Kanwal Jeet Jawa, India head of Japanese manufacturer Daikin, whose factory in Rajasthan churns out 1.2 million air-cond units per year.
“Air-conds increase productivity and life expectancy. Everyone deserves an air-cond,” he said.
The irony is that as humans try to stay cool, the refrigerants inside aircond units and the generation of electricity needed to power the appliances are exacerbating global warming.
In addition, studies – including by the World Health Organisation and UN-Habitat – show that the heat-generating motors inside air-cond units can themselves push up temperatures in urban areas, where the appliances are widely used.
One possible source of hope is if Indians buy more energy-efficient air-cond units, and manufacturers like Daikin are promoting these over older technologies. — AFP