What is Indian cooling action plan?
Indian cooling action plan is a long-term vision to address the cooling requirement of country across sectors and lists out actions which can help reduce the cooling demand. Cooling requirement is an essential part for economic growth. Cooling is required across different sectors of the economy such as residential and commercial buildings, cold-chain, refrigeration, transport and industries.
Why is there a need for Indian cooling action plan?
India’s cooling energy demand is projected to grow exponentially over the next few years. The aggregated nationwide growth is expected to grow 2.2 to 3 times, just in the next decade, over the 2017 baseline.
This poses adverse environmental and societal impacts like significant additional power generation capacity, peak load impacts, and an enormous greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint. However, there is also an increasing recognition of the social and economic imperatives for access to cooling as development priority in the country as well as globally, especially amongst developing countries with tropical climates in a warming world.
Indian Cooling Action Plan (ICAP) will provide a 20-year outlook on how cooling demand in India will evolve and grow, and outline strategies and actions that promote sustainable and smart cooling practices across the nation while mitigating adverse impacts.
What are goals of ICAP?
The overarching goal of ICAP is to provide sustainable cooling and thermal comfort for all while securing environmental and socio-economic benefits for the society. This will also help in reducing both direct and indirect emissions.
ICAP provides an integrated vision towards cooling across sectors including reduction of cooling demand, refrigerant transition, enhancing energy efficiency and better technology options with a 20-year time horizon.
Cooling is also linked to human health and productivity. Linkages of cooling with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are well acknowledged. The cross-sectoral nature of cooling and its use in development of the economy makes provision for cooling an important developmental necessity.
The India Cooling Action seeks to
ICAP recommends synergies with ongoing government programs and schemes such as Housing for All, the Smart Cities Mission, Doubling Farmers Income and Skill India Mission, in order to maximize socio-economic co-benefits.