By T. Jayani, JadeTimes News
Govind Ram, a junk dealer living on the outskirts of Delhi, purchased an air conditioner in May after his children pleaded with him. The intense heatwave scorching the city and surrounding areas led his school going children to complain of "choking" heat. Using his savings, Mr. Ram bought the air conditioner for his children's bedroom, providing relief but at a significant cost his electricity bill last month surged to seven times the usual amount.
"I’ve endured the worst summers with just a fan. But this year, my children suffered so much that I had to buy our family’s first air conditioner," Mr. Ram said.
Over the past fifty years, India has experienced over 700 heatwaves, but experts believe this summer's severe and unrelenting heat ranks among the worst. According to the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), 97% of Indian households have electricity, with 93% relying on fans for comfort. This year, however, the air conditioning market in India has surged unprecedentedly.
"In my 45 years in the air con industry, I've never seen anything like this. The spike in demand is a complete surprise, with sales likely to more than double this summer compared to last year," said B Thiagarajan, managing director of Blue Star, a leading cooling and refrigeration company. He estimates that air conditioner sales could see an unprecedented 60% growth this summer (March to July), compared to the usual 25 to 30% growth in previous years. Thiagarajan recalls that around a decade ago, sales would peak in the last week of May. "Now demand peaks in April." Companies have sold in three months what they typically sell in nine.
Despite only 8% of India’s 300 million households owning air conditioners, with some owning multiple units, India is the world's fastest growing AC market. Of the 170 million units sold globally last year, China purchased 90 million, while India bought 12 million.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris based energy think tank, predicts a nine fold increase in home air conditioner ownership in India by 2050, surpassing the growth in ownership of all other household appliances, including TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines. By then, India's total electricity demand from home air conditioners would exceed Africa's current total electricity consumption, reflecting ongoing trends in energy system evolution, according to the IEA.
"The rising demand reflects, at once, rising aspirations, disposable incomes, and extreme weather," Thiagarajan said. Notably, 95% of Indian air con buyers are aspirational middle class first time purchasers, over 65% hail from smaller cities and towns, and more than half buy through zero interest consumer loans. The average buyer is now in their thirties. Most sales come from the hotter northern region since mid May, for example, daily temperatures in Delhi have consistently stayed around or above 40C (104F).
Experts say Indian cities have become "heat traps" due to unbalanced development. Nearly a billion people across 23 states are exposed to heat stress, according to CEEW. Green spaces are scarce, and rapid growth is swallowing up water bodies that help cool the environment. Increasing greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, factories, and construction activities are raising temperatures further. India’s high rise boom has led to mostly poorly ventilated apartments and glass and chrome office buildings, which absorb and reflect heat. All this is making cities hotter and more uncomfortable to live in.
A recent nationwide survey by Artha Global’s Centre for Rapid Insights (CRI), a think tank, posed the question, "In the afternoon, when it is hot outside, is the inside of your home comfortable?" About 32% of respondents reported their homes as hot and uncomfortable, highlighting India's struggle with extreme temperatures. Among those who can cool their homes, 42% rely on energy intensive air conditioners or coolers, indicating that managing the heat often demands costly solutions.
Additionally, only one in eight four wheeler owners found their homes uncomfortable in extreme heat, compared to nearly half of those without any vehicle. About 40% of both two wheeler and four wheeler owners rely on ACs or coolers for home comfort, while only 16% of non vehicle owners use these cooling solutions. The data highlights how the poor face extreme heat even indoors, without direct sun exposure, said Neelanjan Sircar, director of CRI. The "gap between rich households, who already own air conditioners, and poor households, who are not yet able to buy them, is widening," according to a study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Mannheim, Germany, on air conditioning and global inequality.
Living in windowless slum hutments with poor ventilation and erratic electricity makes staying indoors unbearable. Many slum dwellers literally work next door in luxury condominiums with 24/7 electricity. One told a newspaper recently, "I don’t want to return to my slum. When I work [in an apartment], I feel like lying down under the cool breeze of the AC."
India needs to rejuvenate aquatic habitats lakes, reservoirs, ponds, wetlands, and canals. It also requires building cool houses, using cool roofs (white painted roofs to reduce indoor temperatures), supplying chilled water via pipelines to buildings, and installing more energy efficient air conditioners. Last year, 63 countries, including the US, Canada, and Kenya, signed the world's first ever pledge to drastically reduce cooling emissions. India did not. However, Shalu Agrawal of CEEW says India has made progress. As one of the first countries to implement a cooling action plan, India has pursued nearly two decades of policies to improve AC energy efficiency. Inverter ACs, which are more efficient, now dominate the market, and companies set a default temperature of 24C for energy efficiency. Energy ratings for fans are also mandatory.
But evidence on the ground is mixed. A recent survey by LocalCircles, a community social media platform, found that 43% of air con users in Delhi and its suburbs say that their units can't cool to the 23 to 24C range. Temperatures in the capital have often hovered above 45C this summer.
Nobody doubts that air conditioning is a necessity. But widespread air conditioner use also raises outdoor temperatures by expelling indoor heat. Their chemical refrigerants pose environmental risks. Extreme weather events like heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense with climate change. India needs to do a lot more to protect its people from heat. More than 140 people have died in extreme heat in India this summer, according to officials. The real number is possibly much higher. As India battles an unforgiving heatwave, the surge in AC sales underscores a stark reality, the urgent need for equitable access to cooling solutions remains unmet.