Inside India’s race to cool 1.3 billion people in a warming world

By Josh Dzieza

[...] The cooling industry has found a ready market in Ahmedabad, the largest city in the state of Gujarat. The city bakes each summer until the monsoon comes, at which point temperatures drop into the 90s and the humidity rises to stifling levels. Above the city’s winding streets, crowded with fleets of auto rickshaws and mopeds, billboards declare that every home deserves Hitachi cooling. Elsewhere, Panasonic ads extol the speed at which its “life conditioners” can cool a room. Apartment ads list AC first among amenities offered, and restaurants promise relief from the heat. Appliance shops along the roadside display the industry’s major players in big letters on their windows: Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Blue Star, Panasonic, General — the King of Cool, etched in glass with a crown — Daikin, Carrier.

The world is on track to add 700 million new ACs by 2030, and 1.6 billion by 2050, largely in hot, developing countries like India and Indonesia. But the AC boom threatens to worsen the crisis it’s responding to, and widen the divide between those who can afford to stay cool and those left out in the heat.

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