Upping India’s ‘Cool’ Quotient: Minister Launches Action Plan To Enhance Thermal Comfort, With A Slew Of Measures

Recently, Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan released the India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP) to promote synergies in actions for securing both environmental and socio-economic benefits.

“The overarching goal of ICAP is to provide sustainable cooling and thermal comfort for all while securing environmental and socio-economic benefits for society. This will also help in reducing both direct and indirect emissions.” said the minister.

It should be noted that India is one of the first countries in the world to outline a comprehensive cooling action plan to address the cooling requirements across sectors and lists out actions which can help reduce the cooling demand.

ICAP will aim at the following objectives: reduce cooling demand across sectors by 20 per cent to 25 per cent by 2037-38, reduce refrigerant demand by 25 per cent to 30 per cent by 2037-38, reduce cooling energy requirements by 25 per cent to 40 per cent by 2037-38 and training and certification of 100,000 servicing sector technicians by 2022-23, in partnership with Skill India Mission.

Expanding Market

According to a report commissioned by the Indo-German Energy Forum, India's cooling energy consumption is expected to grow around 2.2 times in 2027 over 2018’s baseline. However necessary interventions as outlined in ICAP can help cut down that figure by 17 per cent in the next decade.

The report added that space cooling in buildings would continue to account for around 60 per cent of the total cooling market and room AC stock-in-use will reach 170 million units in 2027.