India Heat: What record air conditioner sales reveal about the heatwave

Govind Ram, a scrap dealer who lives on the outskirts of the Indian capital, Delhi, bought an air conditioner last May after his children begged him.

A heat wave was scorching the city and surrounding areas, and his school-going children complained of “suffocating” heat. Using his savings, Mr Ram bought an air conditioner for his children’s bedroom. The relief, he says, came at a cost: Last month, his electricity bill rose to seven times the usual amount.

“I have endured the worst of summers under just one fan. But this year, my children suffered so much that I had to buy our family's first air conditioner,” said Mr. Ram.

Over the past five decades, India has faced more than 700 heatwaves, but this summer's extreme heat is among the worst, experts believe. According to the Energy, Environment and Water Council, about 97% of Indian households have electricity, and 93% of them rely on fans for comfort. But this year, the air conditioning market in India witnessed an unprecedented boom.

“In my 45 years in the air conditioning industry I have never seen anything like this,” says P Thiagarajan, Managing Director, Blue Star, a leading refrigeration and air conditioning company. “The surge in demand has come as a complete surprise, with sales likely to more than double.” “This summer compared to last year.”

Air conditioner sales are likely to see an unprecedented 60% growth this summer in India – from March to July – from the usual 25-30% growth in previous years, believes Mr. Thiagarajan. He recalls that about a decade or so ago, sales peaked in the last week of May. “Now demand peaks in April.” Companies sold in three months what they normally sell in nine months.

Although only 8% of India's 300 million households own air conditioners, some of which have multiple units, India is the fastest growing air conditioning market in the world. Of the 170 million units sold globally last year, China bought 90 million units, while India bought 12 million units.

The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based research organization, expects ownership of home air conditioners in the country to rise nine-fold by 2050, outpacing the growth in ownership of all other household appliances, including televisions, refrigerators and washing machines.

By then, India's total electricity demand from household air conditioners will exceed Africa's current total electricity consumption, reflecting ongoing trends in the evolution of the energy system, according to the IEA.

“The rising demand simultaneously reflects rising aspirations, disposable income and extreme weather,” Thiagarajan said.

It is worth noting that 95% of air conditioner buyers in India are first-time aspiring middle-class buyers; More than 65% come from smaller cities and towns; More than half of them buy through interest-free consumer loans. The average buyer is now in their 30s. Most sales come from the hotter northern region – since mid-May, for example, daily temperatures in Delhi have remained consistently around or above 40°C (104°F).

Experts say Indian cities have become “heat traps” due to unbalanced development. Nearly 1 billion people in 23 states are exposed to heat stress, according to CEEW. Green spaces are rare. Rapid growth engulfs bodies of water that help cool the environment. Increased greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, factories and construction activities raise temperatures even further. India's high-rise building boom has given rise to poorly ventilated apartments and office buildings made of glass and chrome, which absorb and reflect heat. All this makes cities hotter and more uncomfortable to live in.

But that's only part of the story. To gauge how well people can cope with rising temperatures, a recent national study reconnaissance In a study conducted by the Artha Global Center for Rapid Insights (CRI), a research center, the following question was asked: “In the afternoon, when it is hot outside, is the interior of your home comfortable?”

About 32% of respondents reported that their homes are hot and uncomfortable, highlighting India's struggle with extreme temperatures. Of those who can cool their homes, 42% rely on energy-intensive air conditioners or chillers, suggesting that heat management often requires expensive solutions.

Only one in eight four-wheel drive vehicle owners found their homes uncomfortable in high temperatures, compared to about half of those who did not own any vehicle. Conversely, about 40% of two-wheeler and four-wheeler owners rely on air conditioners or chillers for their home comfort, while only 16% of non-vehicle owners use these cooling solutions.

The data highlights how poor people are coping with extreme heat even indoors, without direct exposure to sunlight, said Nilanjan Sircar, director of CRI. In other words, “the gap between rich households, who already have air conditioning, and poor households, who cannot afford it, is widening,” according to a study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Mannheim, Germany, on air conditioning and global inequality.

Living in poor, windowless huts, poor ventilation and erratic electricity makes staying indoors unbearable. Many slum dwellers literally work in luxury apartments with 24/7 electricity. One A said Newspaper Recently: “I don’t want to go back to my slum. When I work [in an apartment] “I feel like lying down under the cool air conditioning.”

India needs to regenerate aquatic habitats – lakes, tanks, ponds, wetlands and canals. It also requires building cool homes, using cool roofs—roofs painted white to lower indoor temperatures—supplying buildings with chilled water through pipelines, and installing more energy-efficient air conditioners.

Last year, 63 countries, including the United States, Canada and Kenya, signed the World Charter First ever pledge India has made significant efforts to reduce refrigeration emissions. But India did not do that. However, Shalu Agrawal of the Center for Energy and Environment in Central and Eastern Europe says India has made progress. As one of the first countries to implement a system to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, India was one of the first countries to implement a system to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Refrigeration business planIndia has followed nearly two decades of policies to improve the energy efficiency of air conditioning. Inverter air conditioners, which are more efficient, now dominate the market, and companies set a default temperature of 24°C for energy efficiency. Energy ratings for fans are also mandatory.

But the evidence on the ground is mixed. A recent study by LocalCircles, a community social media platform, found that 43% of air conditioner users in Delhi and its suburbs say their units cannot be cooled to the 23-24 degree Celsius range. Temperatures in the capital often exceeded 45 degrees Celsius this summer.

No one doubts that air conditioning is a necessity. But the widespread use of air conditioners also raises outdoor temperatures by expelling indoor heat. And the refrigerant chemicals contained in air conditioners pose environmental risks.

Extreme weather events such as heat waves are becoming more frequent and intense with climate change. India needs to do more to protect its people from the heat. More than 140 people have died due to extreme temperatures in India this summer, according to officials. The real number may be much higher.

As India battles an unforgiving heatwave, the surge in air conditioner sales highlights a stark reality: that the urgent need for equitable access to cooling solutions remains unmet.