12.5 Million Air Conditioners to be sold next year in India

Climate change delivers the kicker.

As per media reports, the summer this year was a bumper season for sale of air-conditioners in India.

People bought air-conditioners like there was no tomorrow leading to 15-30 days delay in installation services once they had purchased it. There were massive backlogs across all white goods sales showroom.

With temperatures hitting 50 degrees or more across the country coupled with easy buying options like Buy-Now-Pay-Later, Credit Cards and EMI schemes, Indians went on a purchasing spree.

Although the Government taxes air-conditioners as luxury items, it has increasingly become a necessity across the length and breadth of the country.

It is being estimated that the trend will continue.

12.5 Million Units are likely to be sold in the coming summer.

If the value of one air-conditioner is taken at 30,000 (on an average), this translates to a sale figure of 37,500 Crores of business in new and replacement market.

People are replacing their aging machines which were high consumption models with lower power consumption’s one too.

If one was to consider that each air-conditioner ran for just 3 hours a day and consumed 2 units per hour, then electricity consumption per air-conditioner is going to add a demand of 180 Units per day.

When you multiply that with 12.5 Million New Air-Conditioners that we are going to add, the electricity required to run them comes to 225 Crore units.

If you take the average cost of a unit at 8 Rupees, this works out to 1800 Crores of power that will be consumed for ever.

In India, almost 60% of power is produced by coal-guzzling thermal power plants. So, effectively, we will be adding to the pollution that already exists.

Mind you, this is an incremental figure from where we stand today.

We have screwed up the environment so much, done away with green cover, continue to use fossil fuels, that we have brought upon ourselves this catastrophic situation.

Time to find other ways to live cooler.

Attempts should be made to increase the green cover across the length and breadth of the country. This can only be done by governments alone as they are the biggest land owners in the country.

Individuals hardly have any land holding where they can plant trees and bring about effective reduction is temperatures.

We need to innovate on how to bring down temperatures rather than going for air-conditioning as a solution.

We have so many buildings which have a glass facade. These building become green houses in summer, trapping in hot air and increasing the need for cooling.

Although people pay for the cooling from their own pockets, the overall effect of this extra power consumption leads to further climate change.

Air-Conditioners are heat exchanges. They take the heat from inside your room and transfer it outside to the open. Thus while you cool your room, you are heating up the environment.

We should be working on reverse, how to cool the outside such that the indoors remain cool on its own.

The mud houses of yore did a good job of keeping houses cool. Insulated walls and insulated glass doors and windows can help keep the heat out, thus reducing the need to cool the room. Double walls can help too.

We rarely build double walls because they are a capital expense but are willing to spend on recurring costs and consequent environmental degradation.

If we are not the fools then tell me who are?