Draft India Cooling Action Plan "grossly inadequate": CSE

Lack of planning can completely upset the energy budget of the country

South Africa Beetle Threatens Trees Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan Monday released a draft India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP) during World Ozone Day celebrations | Image for representation

A green body Tuesday dismissed as "grossly inadequate" and limited in scope the draft India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP), which lists out actions which can help reduce the cooling demand and help in reducing emissions.

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) also strongly asked for immediate revision of the ICAP document to address the serious gaps which it said if not rectified now can lock in "irreversible" energy guzzling.

Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan Monday released a draft India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP) during World Ozone Day celebrations.

India is the first country in world to develop such a document—ICAP, which also gives thrust towards looking for synergies in actions for securing both environmental and socio-economic benefits.

The ICAP provides a 20-year perspective (2017-18 to 2037-38) to address the cooling requirements across sectors and ways and means to provide access to sustainable cooling for all, the CSE said.

"If we are planning to provide 'Sustainable Cooling' and 'Thermal Comfort for All', we cannot ignore 90 per cent of the Indian population's need to have thermal comfort and also the requirements of a range of other services including agricultural cold chains, provision of safe vaccines, and many other services that require cooling to function.

"These have remained outside the scope of the ICAP," said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director-research and advocacy, CSE.

Roychowdhury further added,"This lack of planning can completely upset the energy budget of the country.

"At the same time, the ICAP has not indicated the benchmark for thermal comfort that needs to guide energy efficiency measures for all users of active as well as passive cooling."

While the ICAP aims to provide sustainable cooling and thermal comfort for all, its actual intent is "myopically" focused on only the market for personal air conditioners, ignoring the fact that demand for cooling is driven by people and not by sale of air conditioners, say CSE analysts.

According to the draft, the goals emerging from the suggested interventions are - recognition of 'cooling and related areas' as a thrust area of research under national science and technology programme to support development of technological solutions and encourage innovation challenges, reduction of cooling demand across sectors by 20-25 per cent by 2037-38 among others.

The other goals from the suggestions include reduction of refrigerant demand by 25-30 per cent by 2037-38, reduction of cooling energy requirements by 25-40 per cent by 2037-38 and training and certification of 1,00,000 servicing sector technicians by the year 2022-23, in synergy with Skill India Mission.

The CSE said ICAP must capture equity issue, ensure thermal comfort for all without over dependence on active cooling.

The green body said the ICAP must take note of the fact that about 60 per cent of current space cooling energy consumption is by top 10 per cent of the population.

Over 96 per cent of transport cooling energy consumption is due to personal cars (13.5 per cent of population) and this small minority skews electricity demand and locks in enormous carbon energy guzzling.

"In Delhi, 25-30 per cent of annual energy consumption is because of thermal stress; in peak summer, when energy demand soars, it is as much as 50 per cent of energy consumption.

"When temperature drops, energy consumption in the city drops dramatically - from 6,346 MW to 3,323 MW (10 degrees Celsius drop leads to 48 per cent demand drop in energy, irrespective of the time of day). This points to the importance of cooling and heating in energy management," it said.

The body said ICAP needs immediate "overhaul".

It pointed out that India needs thermal comfort defined to guide interventions for energy efficiency in buildings and there is also a need to estimate cooling demand based on thermal comfort definition and not on sales of ACs.

"National building codes should be amended to ensure all buildings are designed in a way that indoor conditions do not get hotter than the national goal for majority of hours in the year using passive design," CSE said, adding there is also a need for more robust standards, labelling and testing methodology for ACs.