Propelling Sustainable Cooling - Through Public Procurement

In this article, Shivam Gupta, Gaurav Phore, and Shanmuganathan K say that public procurement for sustainable cooling products can lead to saving benefits in terms of cost, electricity consumption, and emission reductions. Propelling sustainable cooling through public procurement can be one of the effective ways for India to contribute towards its share in the Kigali Amendment implementation.

- Shivam Gupta, Gaurav Phore, and Shanmuganathan K

The latest and the Sixth Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2021, finds that climate change impacts will be more pronounced in the coming year. If necessary control measures are not taken, we will be facing more catastrophic weather events than what we are seeing today such as wildfires in the Arctic, heatwaves in Canada, deadly floods in Germany, Belgium, a flash flood in the Indian Himalayan Valley, cyclone Tauktae in western India, among others. Countries must make strong commitments to reducing the persisting impacts of climate change. The persisting warming events have made the thermal comfort of people a felt necessity. In recent years, cooling applications have become an integral part of people’s lives, ranging from providing thermal comfort to storage of medical amenities. With its applications spread across commercial, residential and industrial sectors, cooling has seen manifold growth over the last two decades. However, all cooling technologies and appliances use chemicals that have large implications not only in terms of global warming but also energy consumption. Understanding the environmental impacts of cooling, India has been a front runner in the implementation of the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS). Under the Protocol, India has successfully phased out ODS in 2010, and now it is in the process of phasing out hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). Complementing persevering growth in the cooling sector, India developed the India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP) that provides strategies across different sectors to reduce cooling demand, refrigerant transition, enhance energy efficiency, and training to 100,000 servicing personnel by 2037–38.