ANNOUNCEMENTS
The market average ISEER for air conditioner (AC) in India is 3.37 while the most efficient AC available in market has ISEER of 6.15. The annual power consumption of market average AC is 1.57 times more than the best available technology. India is expected to become one of the largest markets of ACs in the coming years. With this increasing demand, there exist a huge potential for the AC market to grow sustainably. Decisions made in the next few years would shape whether India would exploit this opportunity to make its air conditioning market efficient and less costly. The study tries to explore how Indian residential AC sector would evolve in future and also tries to assess the implications of various 22 incentives which could accelerate the shift towards efficient air conditioning. The research was carried out within the modelling framework of GCAM. The study sets up a baseline for total AC stock, energy consumption and indirect CO2 emissions from room AC sector. The total AC stock would reach to 484 million resulting in 615.38 million tonnes of cumulative emissions by 2050. The report further highlights the mitigation potential of fiscal instruments such as lowering of GST and provision of subsidy on efficient air conditioning appliances. It was found that changing GST slab of only high efficiency ACs from 28% to 18% would increase its share in market and is most cost effective. The potential electricity savings will reach 39.61 billion KWh in 2050. This is equivalent to providing electricity to 49.2 million people having annual electricity consumption of 805.6 KWh/capita.
Key words: GCAM, Room air conditioners, energy consumption, energy efficiency, CO2 emissions
