India heat: What record air conditioner sales reveal about heatwave

After his children pleaded with him, Govind Ram, a junk dealer who lives on the outskirts of the American capital, Delhi, purchased an air conditioning in May.

A fiery heat was scorching the town and its neighbourhood, and his college- going children complained of” choking” temperature. Using his pocketbook, Mr Ram bought the air conditioning for his son’s home. This pleasure, he says, has come at a cost – his electric bill next month soared to seven times the usual quantity.

” I’ve had the worst summer under the direct control of a lover. But this year, my kids suffered so much that I had to get our mother’s second heat conditioner”, Mr Ram said.

Over the past five years, India has faced over 700 wildfires but this season’s serious and unrelenting temperature has to qualify among the worst, researchers believe. Some 97 % of Indian households are electrified, with 93 % relying on fans for comfort, according to think tank Council on Energy Environment and Water ( CEEW). But this year, India’s heat cooling market has surged like never before.

” In my 45 times in the air- fraud market, I’ve never seen anything like this. The spike in demand is a perfect surprise, with sales plausible to more than twice this summertime compared to last year”, says B Thiagarajan, managing director of Blue Star, a leading heating and cooling business.

According to Mr. Thiagarajan, the purchase of air conditioning will likely experience an unprecedented rise of 60 % this summer in India from the usual 25 to 30 % growth in past decades. Around a decade or more ago, he remembers, profits may peak in the last week of May. ” Then need mountains in April”. What organizations do normally sell in nine months have been sold by them in three months.

Despite just 8 % of India’s 300 million homes owning air conditioning, with some having several products, India is the nation’s fastest- growing AC business. Of the 170 million units sold worldwide next month, China purchased 90 million, while India bought 12 million.

By 2050, according to the International Energy Agency ( IEA ), a Paris-based energy think tank, home air conditioner ownership will be ninefold higher than ownership of all other household appliances, including TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines.

By then, India’s total energy demand from household air conditioners may exceed Africa’s existing total energy intake, reflecting the ongoing trends in power system evolution, according to IEA.

” The rising demand reflects, at again, rising dreams, disposable incomes and extraordinary weather”, Mr Thiagarajan said.

The CEEW information provides some intriguing insight into the sources of air conditioner purchases in India.

Importantly, 95 % of American air- con buyers are ambitious mid- class first- time purchasers, over 65 % hail from smaller cities and towns, and more than half buy through zero- interest consumer loans. Also, the average buyer is now in their thirties. The hotter northern region accounts for the majority of sales; for instance, daily temperatures in Delhi have consistently remained around or above 40C ( 104F ) since mid-May.

Experts say Indian cities have become “heat traps” due to unbalanced development. According to CEEW, nearly a billion people in 23 states are exposed to heat stress. Green spaces are scarce. Water bodies that help cool the environment are being sucked up by rapid growth. The rise in temperatures is brought on by increasing greenhouse gas emissions from cars, factories, and construction activities. Due to India’s high-rise boom, glass and chrome office buildings, which absorb and reflect heat, and generally poorly ventilated apartments. All of this is making cities hotter and more uncomfortable to live in.

But this is only one part of the story. To gauge how people were coping with rising temperatures, 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. 42 % of those who can cool their homes rely on energy-intensive air conditioners or coolers, which suggests that managing the heat frequently necessitates expensive solutions.

Additionally, only one in eight four-wheeler owners experienced extreme heat in their homes, compared to nearly half of those without a car. Conversely, 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. In other words, 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 University of California, Berkeley and 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, canals. Additionally, it necessitates installing more energy-efficient air conditioners, using cool roofs – white painted roofs to lower indoor temperatures, providing chilled water via pipelines to buildings, and building cool houses.

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. Shalu Agrawal of CEEW, however, 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.

However, the 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 ca n’t cool to the 23- 24C range. This summer, the capital’s temperatures have frequently climbed above 45C.

Nobody doubts that air conditioning is a necessity. However, widespread use of air conditioners also raises the temperature inside because it expels the heat inside. Their chemical refrigerants could have an impact on the environment.

With climate change, extreme weather events like heatwaves are getting more frequent and powerful. India needs to do a lot more to shield its citizens from the elements. More than 140 people have died in extreme heat in India this summer, according to officials. The actual number could be much higher.

The surge in AC sales underscores a stark reality: the urgent need for equitable access to cooling solutions remains unmet as India battles an unforgiving heatwave.