CNN –
When scorching, extreme heat hit India's capital this summer, Ramesh felt helpless but had no choice but to continue to toil under the scorching sun to support his family.
“The heat is becoming unbearable,” the 34-year-old Maurer told CNN. “But we have no choice, we have to work.”
Ramesh lives with his parents, three brothers, a sister-in-law and three children in a crowded suburb in western Delhi, a city that has made headlines in recent years because mercury levels regularly reach dangerous levels.
And when temperatures topped 40 degrees (104 Fahrenheit) this June — closing schools, damaging crops and squeezing energy supplies — the heat also made his family sick.
Ramesh, who goes by one name, says he borrowed $35 – almost half his monthly salary – from relatives to buy a used air conditioner for his home.
“It makes noise, sometimes it releases dust,” he said. But he can't do without it.
Aishwarya Iyer/CNN
Ramesh sits outside his apartment in Delhi.
Climate experts say India will be among the first places where temperatures exceed survivable limits by 2050. And within this period, demand for air conditioning (AC) in the country is also expected to increase nine-fold, surpassing that of all other appliances, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Ramesh's predicament gets to the heart of the paradox facing the world's most populous country of 1.4 billion people: the hotter and wealthier India gets, the more Indians will use air conditioning. And the more they use alternating current, the hotter it gets in the country.
According to the European Union, India emits almost 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, contributing about 7% of global emissions. In comparison, the United States produces 13% of CO2 emissions, despite having a quarter of India's population living there.
This raises a question of fairness that climate scientists have often asked: Should people in developing countries bear the cost of reducing emissions, even though they are among those least responsible for rising greenhouse gases?
At the COP28 climate talks in Dubai that recently concluded, India was not among the countries that signed a pledge to reduce their emissions from cooling systems. Addressing the opening session of the summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said all developing countries must be given “a fair share of the global carbon budget”.
Yet India, one of the world's fastest-growing economies, is at the forefront of the climate crisis. And it is in a difficult position. How can it balance its development while ensuring environmental protection?
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during a session at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Dubai, December 1, 2023.
Large sections of the Indian population continue to rely on air conditioning for their physical and mental well-being. And in the more tropical southern regions of the country, it remains hot all year round.
Over the past five decades, the country has experienced more than 700 heatwaves, killing more than 17,000 people. This is according to a 2021 study of extreme weather events in the journal Weather and Climate Extremes. In June this year alone, temperatures rose to 47 degrees Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) in some parts of the country, leaving at least 44 people dead and hundreds suffering from heat-related illnesses.
And by 2030, India could account for 34 million of the projected 80 million global job losses due to heat stress, a December 2022 World Bank report said.
This puts millions of people at risk in a country where more than 50% of the workforce is employed in agriculture. And as incomes continue to rise while urban populations explode, air conditioning ownership has grown at a remarkable pace.
According to the IEA, India's electricity consumption from cooling – which includes air conditioners and refrigerators – increased by 21% between 2019 and 2022. By 2050, India's total electricity demand from residential air conditioning will exceed today's total electricity consumption across Africa, it said.
But this demand is also exacerbating the global climate crisis.
Like refrigerators, many air conditioners today use a class of refrigerants called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are harmful greenhouse gases. Even more problematic, air conditioning systems tend to use large amounts of electricity generated by burning fossil fuels.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that greenhouse gas emissions from air conditioning – if left unchecked – could be responsible for a rise in global temperatures of up to 0.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
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Farmers carry rice on their shoulders after harvesting in a field in Nagaon district of Assam, India, on November 21, 2023.
India still struggles with widespread poverty and is spending billions to modernize its transport and urban infrastructure as it faces long-standing challenges to improve living standards.
And limiting cooling-related emissions could be seen as a potential obstacle to the country's economic growth, experts say.
During the recent COP summit, 63 countries – including the US, Kenya and Canada – signed a pledge to reduce their emissions from cooling systems by 68% by 2050, among several other targets. India was not in this group.
Still, Brian Dean, head of energy efficiency and cooling at Sustainable Energy for All, who helped draft the agreement, said India had taken “important international leadership on cooling.”
“Although India has not yet joined the Global Cooling Pledge, important progress has been made domestically in sustainable cooling and international partners hope that India will consider joining in the future,” he said.
Following the United Nations' 2016 Kigali Amendment, many countries, including India, are abandoning HFCs and replacing them with more climate-friendly options such as hydrofluoroolefins or HFOs.
Similar moves have worked in the past. The Kigali Amendment is an update to the Montreal Protocol, which helped phase out ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the 1980s.
Still, countries that lack access to sufficient cooling need help to cover the costs of energy improvements, according to Radhika Khosla, an associate professor at the University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and Environment.
“Cooling is now on the global agenda,” she said. “But the hard work must begin to ensure everyone stays cool without heating the planet further.”
The more sustainable “passive cooling strategies” Khosla suggests include planting trees that absorb sunlight, bodies of water, courtyards that promote cooling, and clever ventilation.
Installing ceiling fans in buildings can reduce household energy consumption for cooling by more than 20%, she added.
“If successful, passive cooling measures could reduce cooling demand by 24% by 2050, save $3 trillion and negate greenhouse gas emissions of 1.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide,” she said.
Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Residents fill water from a water tanker in a slum in New Delhi, India, on Friday, May 19, 2023.
India has also pledged to reduce its electricity demand for cooling purposes by 20-25% by 2038 as part of its own Cooling Action Plan announced in 2019, while continuing to focus on developing and implementing cost-effective solutions consistent with its economic goals.
Dean calls it “one of the first comprehensive national cooling action plans developed anywhere in the world.”
It is, he said, “an important moment to emphasize the need to proactively and urgently address slowing demand growth, including in agriculture, where sustainable cold chains can prevent food loss and improve nutritional outcomes.”
According to Leena Nandan, India's Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change, renewable energy in India is also growing faster than any other major economy and data shows the country is on track to meet its emissions reduction targets.
India remains proactive in finding climate solutions despite not being a major contributor to the crisis, she told reporters during the COP28 summit.
“We have further expanded our climate ambitions,” she said.
But India's AC boom is visible in almost all urban corners of the country.
Hundreds of construction sites are scattered across the capital, where workers are toiling to build gleaming high-rises to house New Delhi's burgeoning middle class.
Penta Anil Kumar, a businessman who lives in Lajpat Nagar, a busy neighborhood in south Delhi, said he was aware of the harmful emissions from his air conditioner and consciously bought an energy-efficient model that could meet his cooling needs.
“While I know that using air conditioning contributes to higher temperatures, I also know that there is not much else I can do,” he said.
But Kumar is among the luckier ones who can afford a more expensive AC model.
Ghasiram, a 65-year-old laborer from Delhi's Rohini district, paid a contractor $36 to get his family a used air conditioner. But that's more than what he earns in a month.
Ghasiram, who goes by one name, said he was unaware that emissions from his air conditioning were partly fueling the rising temperatures. But he suffers from the consequences.
“The heat has gotten worse over the years,” he said. “When I have to go to work in the heat, I feel nervous. I’d rather not go out.”