The Cooling Crisis in the Global South: Why Efficiency Is the Only Option
By 2050, cooling could emit 7.2 Gt of CO₂ annually — nearly double 2022 levels. The window to shape market standards across the Global South is narrow, and it is closing fast.
Ahvant Foundation
Research & Policy
Air conditioning already accounts for approximately 10% of global electricity consumption, according to IEA data from 2023. That single statistic understates the trajectory. The number of room air conditioners in operation globally is expected to triple by 2050 — from roughly 2 billion units today to over 5.6 billion. The emissions consequence of this growth, absent dramatic efficiency improvements, is stark: cooling could emit 7.2 gigatonnes of CO₂ equivalent annually by mid-century, nearly double the 2022 level.
The geography of this growth is concentrated in the Global South. Southeast Asia presents one of the clearest examples: the region's air conditioner stock is projected to grow ninefold by 2040, driven by rising incomes, rapid urbanisation, and average temperatures that make cooling a necessity rather than a luxury. Sub-Saharan Africa faces an even starker situation: approximately 1.2 billion people currently lack access to adequate cooling. As incomes rise and electricity access expands, the question is not whether cooling demand will grow — it is whether it will grow efficiently.
India sits at the centre of this challenge. With over 1.4 billion people, a large proportion of whom live in hot and humid or hot and dry climate zones, India's cooling demand is set to increase twenty-fold by 2050. Each 1°C rise in average temperature adds approximately 7 GW of peak cooling demand to the grid — a direct link between climate change and electricity infrastructure investment that few policymakers have fully internalised.
The efficiency gap is the crux of the problem. The average new air conditioner sold in India today operates at roughly 50% of the efficiency of the best available technology on the market. There is no technical barrier to deploying highly efficient cooling equipment at scale — the technology exists. The barrier is economic and institutional: first costs are higher, consumer awareness is low, and market incentives favour cheap upfront purchase over lifecycle efficiency.
India's India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP), updated in 2025, sets ambitious targets: a 20–25% reduction in cooling energy demand by 2037–38, alongside refrigerant transition goals aligned with the Kigali Amendment. These are the right targets. The question is implementation velocity. ICAP identifies building codes, appliance standards, and consumer awareness as the three primary levers — but progress on each has been uneven.
There are fundamentally two levers for addressing the cooling crisis. The first is reducing the need for mechanical cooling altogether through passive design: building orientation, envelope insulation, high-performance glazing, shading devices, and natural ventilation. Well-designed passive cooling measures can reduce the cooling load of a building by 30–50%, dramatically shrinking the size of mechanical systems needed. The second lever is decarbonising the remaining cooling load through high-efficiency equipment, low global-warming-potential refrigerants, and grid-interactive controls that allow cooling systems to respond to renewable energy availability.
The market window argument is perhaps the most urgent. Buildings constructed today will be standing — and cooling — in 2060. Air conditioners installed this year will run for 15 to 20 years. The decisions made in the next five to ten years will lock in the efficiency trajectory of hundreds of millions of cooling systems across the Global South. This is not a problem that can be deferred and then corrected. Once inefficient equipment is embedded in buildings, the cost of retrofitting or replacing it is enormous.
The World Bank estimates that the cooling efficiency market opportunity in India alone could reach USD 1.5 trillion by 2040, accounting for efficiency gains across equipment, buildings, and cold chain logistics. For policymakers, manufacturers, and investors who move early to establish high-efficiency market standards, this represents an extraordinary commercial and development opportunity. The cooling crisis is real — but so is the potential of the solution.