Making the world hotter: India’s expected AC boom

BEHROR, India — Ratan Kumar once battled India’s brutal summers with damp bedsheets and midnight baths. Now he is among millions of Indians using air conditioning — helping make the world hotter still.

With India’s AC 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 No 3 producer of greenhouse gases, burning through 800 million tons of coal every year — and the predicted AC 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 $225 a month who this year installed an AC unit in his two-room house in the town of Behror in the baking-hot desert state of Rajasthan.

“Sleeping for a 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 grueling four-month long summer, and the mercury has been inching ever higher in recent years.

In 2016, the Earth’s hottest year on record, temperatures in the Indian town of Phalodi soared to 51 C, the highest recorded in India.

The brutal heat can melt tarmac on the roads and puts millions of people at risk, with nearly 2,500 victims perishing from sunstroke in 2015.

Currently just 5 percent of Indian households are equipped with AC compared to 90 percent in the United States and 60 percent in China, up from virtually zero 30 years ago.

But India’s AC 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 AC units per year. “ACs increase productivity and life expectancy. Everyone deserves an AC.”

The irony is that as humans try to stay cool, the AC units are exacerbating global warming, with studies showing that the heatgenerating motors can themselves push up temperatures in urban areas by a degree or more.

JALEES ANDRABI / AFP