Heat in India: what record air conditioner sales reveal about the heatwave – BBC News

Govind Ram, a second-hand dealer living in the suburbs of the Indian capital, Delhi, bought an air conditioner in May after his children begged him.

A scorching heatwave was ravaging the city and its environs, and his school-age children were complaining of “stifling” heat. Using his savings, Mr. Ram bought an air conditioner for his children’s room. The relief, he says, came at a cost: his electricity bill last month soared to seven times the usual amount.

“I spent the worst summers with just a fan. But this year, my children suffered so much that I had to buy the family’s first air conditioner,” Mr. Ram said.

India has experienced more than 700 heat waves in the past five decades, but this summer’s intense, relentless heat must rank among the worst, experts say. About 97% of Indian households have electricity, and 93% of them rely on fans for comfort, according to the Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW) think tank. But this year, India’s air-conditioning market has seen unprecedented growth.

“In my 45 years of experience in the air conditioning industry, I have never seen anything like this. The surge in demand comes as a complete surprise, with sales likely to more than double this summer compared to last year,” says B Thiagarajan, managing director, Blue Star, a leading cooling and refrigeration company.

According to Mr. Thiagarajan, sales of air conditioners are expected to grow by an unprecedented 60% this summer in India (March-July), compared with the usual growth of 25-30% in previous years. About a decade ago, he recalls, sales used to peak in the last week of May. “Now, demand peaks in April.” Companies have sold in three months what they usually sold in nine months.

Although only 8% of India’s 300 million households own air conditioners, with some owning multiple units, India is the world’s fastest-growing air conditioning market. Of the 170 million units sold globally last year, China bought 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 the country by 2050, outpacing 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 would exceed Africa’s current total electricity consumption, reflecting current trends in energy system evolution, according to the IEA.

“The growing demand reflects both growing aspirations, disposable incomes and extreme weather conditions,” Mr. Thiagarajan said.

Notably, 95% of Indian air conditioner buyers are ambitious, middle-class first-time buyers; more than 65% are from small towns and villages; and more than half are buying with zero-interest consumer loans. Moreover, the average buyer is now in their 30s. Most sales are coming from the warmer north – since mid-May, for example, daily temperatures in Delhi have consistently hovered 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 at risk of heat stress, according to CEEW. Green spaces are rare. Rapid growth engulfs bodies of water which help cool the environment. Increased greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, factories and construction activities are causing temperatures to rise further. India’s skyscraper boom has given rise to mostly poorly ventilated apartments and office buildings made of glass and chrome, which absorb and reflect heat. All of this makes cities hotter and more uncomfortable to live in.

But that’s only part of the story. To gauge how people were coping with rising temperatures, a recent national survey conducted by the Center for Rapid Insights (CRI) at Artha Global, a think tank, asked: “In the afternoon, when it’s hot outside, how comfortable is the inside of your home?”

About 32% of respondents said their homes were hot and uncomfortable, highlighting India’s challenges in coping with extreme temperatures. Of those who can cool their homes, 42% rely on energy-intensive air conditioners or chillers, indicating that managing heat often requires costly solutions.

Additionally, only one in eight four-wheel vehicle owners find their home uncomfortable in extreme heat, compared to nearly half of those who don’t have a vehicle. Conversely, around 40% of two- and four-wheeler owners rely on air conditioning or cooling for home comfort, while only 16% of non-vehicle owners use these cooling solutions.

Data shows that the poor face extreme heat even indoors, without direct exposure to sunlight, 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 obtain them, is widening,” according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Mannheim, Germany, on air conditioning and global inequality.

Living in windowless, poorly ventilated slums with spotty electricity makes the lockdown unbearable. Many slum dwellers literally work next door, in luxury condominiums with 24/7 electricity. One recently told a newspaper: “I don’t want to go back to my slum. When I work (in an apartment), I want to lie down under the cool breeze of the air conditioning.”

India needs to renovate aquatic habitats – lakes, reservoirs, ponds, wetlands, canals. It also needs to build cool houses, use cool roofs – painted white to reduce indoor temperatures – provide chilled water through pipes to buildings, and install more energy-efficient air conditioners.

Last year, 63 countries, including the United States, Canada and Kenya, signed the first global commitment to significantly reduce cooling-related emissions. India has not done so. 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 policies to improve the energy efficiency of air conditioners for almost two decades. Inverter air conditioners, which are more efficient, now dominate the market, and companies set a default temperature of 24°C for energy efficiency. Fan energy ratings are also mandatory.

But the evidence on the ground is mixed. A recent survey by LocalCircles, a community-based social media platform, found that 43% of air conditioner users in Delhi and its suburbs say their units cannot cool to between 23 and 24°C. Temperatures in the capital have often exceeded 45°C this summer.

No one doubts that air conditioning is a necessity. But the widespread use of air conditioners also increases outdoor temperatures by removing indoor heat. Their chemical refrigerants pose environmental risks.

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

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