Protecting Health as Cooling Demand Skyrockets in India

Cooling demand in India is growing at the rate of 15-20% annually. Space cooling for buildings currently dominates the total cooling energy demand in India and buildings are expected to drive major demand for cooling in the country in the future. The plan supports five key goals: improving understanding of the implications of increased cooling demand through applied research, reducing cooling demand across sectors, reducing energy requirements of appliances, reducing demand for refrigerants, and improving training and certification of servicing sector technicians. Understanding Local Demand for CoolingGERMI is employing two methods to assess city-level cooling demand in Ahmedabad: population-based scaling and GDP/population based scaling. Thus far, the two methodologies estimate similar shares of energy use across the cooling sector and indicate that space cooling dominates Ahmedabad’s cooling demand.