Indian cooling action plan is about improving the quality of life and productivity of the people of India, and achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and accelerating the country’s growth trajectory. Discuss (200 Words)
Refer - The Indian Express
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 6 years
KEY POINTS
· India is one of the first countries in the world to develop a comprehensive Cooling Action plan which has a long term vision to address the cooling requirement across sectors and lists out actions which can help reduce the cooling demand.
· India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP) provides an integrated vision towards cooling across sectors encompassing inter alia reduction of cooling demand, refrigerant transition, enhancing energy efficiency and better technology options with a 20 year time horizon.
The following benefits would accrue to the society over and above the environmental benefits:
· Thermal comfort for all – provision for cooling for EWS and LIG housing,
· Sustainable cooling – low GHG emissions related to cooling,
· Doubling Farmers Income – better cold chain infrastructure – better value of produce to farmers, less wastage of produce,
· Skilled workforce for better livelihoods and environmental protection,
· Make in India – domestic manufacturing of air-conditioning and related cooling equipment’s,
· Robust R&D on alternative cooling technologies – to provide push to innovation in cooling sector.
Closely tied to achieving several of the Sustainable Development Goals
· Conceived against the backdrop of the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the Kigali Amendment, the ICAP for the first time harmonises separate policy streams: Energy consumption and refrigerant use.
· The thrust is on ensuring that the vulnerable populations, particularly children and the elderly, are not exposed to undue heat stresses.
· ICAP proposes an approach that first reduces the cooling energy demand through climate appropriate and energy efficient building design, then serves the demand through energy efficient appliances and finally, controls and optimises the demand through demand-side and user adaptation strategies, such as adaptive thermal comfort.
· The plan lays special emphasis on enabling thermal comfort for the economically-weaker sections through climate-appropriate designs of affordable housing, and low-cost interventions to achieve better thermal insulation (such as cool roofs).
· The benefits of the proposed actions extend to enhancing nationwide productivity, reducing heat-islands in urban areas, mitigating peak-load impacts and reducing the stress on the power systems — much of this would also free up capital for other developmental priorities.
· Driving skill-building of the services sector through training and certification is an important target identified by the plan.
· It also presents an opportunity for providing increased employment, better livelihoods, and safer working practices for the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) sector.
