Aug 20, 2012

Unconditioned Surrender?

Captivating  NYT graphic 
As usual, another day, another thought (and blog) provoking article in the NYT. This article, and a very nice accompanying graphic, highlight the quandary that is presented by, on the one hand, an increasingly warming planet and on the other an increasingly affluent, tropical, and urban populace that would like nothing better than to beat the heat (thus adding to energy scarcity and global warming problems).

So forget global warming and climate change for the moment, right? Even if you are a "climate skeptic" (and it is difficult for me to give you that), one walk around office blocks or residential communities here in India will (not scientifically, but still) show you how there is more latent demand for 'AC' units in any one major Indian city than all of the continental US. The problem, as highlighted by the recent epic failure of two major grids in Northern India, is that there just isn't enough power to fuel all those ACs (which are increasingly affordable)!

The article also points out that air conditioning isn't a nice to have feature any more either - there are plenty of studies showing it helps human beings be more productive at work and have better health overall (when used 'correctly'). Anecdotal evidence suggests also that a lot of modern architecture, obsessed as it is with fitting as many people into as little space as possible in offices and in homes, actually demands air conditioning to make the buildings habitable!

So what is to be done?

The only thing individuals can do (and that my wife and I have done) is resist installing air conditioning at home. We've held out for about 3.5 years now, and done OK without it - although this latest summer was rather bad when the temperatures here in Hyderabad soared to 45 C/ 113 F and the monsoon seemed to take forever to kick in.

Now, we do use a water based "Cooler" in the worst spells of summer, but having gone through four Hyderabad summers without ACs I can attest to how difficult it is to hold out and keep this resolution. We might not make it through a fifth season, so I can hardly preach this gospel. I certainly cannot preach it to someone living in Mumbai or Chennai, where a bad summer (or even a sticky, humid monsoon season) can sap the will to live out of us coddled middle-classers... So much for that idea then!

What are communities to do? Forget the 70% of Indians who can't afford an AC (yet) anyway... the remaining 30% want air conditioning as badly as they want a first or second car, bigger the better. India has already gone from viewing TV and land-line phones as a luxury (c. 1985) to TVs and cellphones being more prevalent in slums than proper toilets (c. 2010). You had to live in an Indian city in 2003 to see how much of a status symbol air conditioning was then, and you have to live in one today to see how easily ACs have gone from that to being "essential" for most yuppies.

If you're expecting the neighborhood to come together and ban air conditioning, don't hold your breath. Indians will stop using spices in our cooking sooner than that!

That unfortunately just leaves us with (shudders!) the government as an agent of problem solving.

So what can governments do? The obvious options -
  • Reduce population drastically - non-starter clearly :-) (but oh, but they do try valiantly). The most governments can do, like China with it's one child policy, is discourage larger families and slow population growth. But slowing growth does nothing to address the large mass of 1.3 B people we already have in India (or the 7B crowding the planet overall already)
  • Increase conventional energy production? Nuclear - Chernobyl and Fukushima notwithstanding - is the only realistic supply option at the moment, and as the NYT reports, the Indo-American nuclear deal is really going nowhere in adding any supply to Indian markets any time soon.
  • Fund/ give incentives for non-conventional energy production? Geo-thermal, solar, wind, bio-mass, wave power are all nice ideas but years from practical use.
Obvious and impractical then! What are some of the subtler options available then? Actually scratch that... if there's one thing world history shows us, it is that government policy is more often than not a blunt instrument. Governments understand only two ways to 'encourage' economic behavior - proscription, and taxation. (Or maybe they'll be creative and proscribe through taxation!).

Since banning air conditioning seems a) impossible, and b) most likely counterproductive, the only option remaining on the government table is to tax the usage of ACs.

My own rather blunt instrument of a mind then comes up with these blunt ideas:
  1. Make air-conditioning more expensive via a tax. Any resulting revenues should be sequestered and funneled into alternative energy research. (Yes, there's a cynical Mr Hyde in my head going "fat lot of good that'll do!")
  2. Provide incentives (tantalizingly lower property and other taxes?) on buildings that are greener, and more importantly do not use air conditioning, and minimize power utilization
  3. Bill power usage for air conditioning separately and at a premium (separate meters for ACs). This might encourage people to switch ACs off except at the worst of times in a year. 
  4. A whole separate sub-grid for ACs? One that can be switched off the minute there's a shortage in available power?
  5. Make it illegal for residential ACs to be hooked up to diesel generators that most large Indian communities use these days in cases of power failure - only allowance being made for public buildings and hospitals 
  6. Encourage localized as opposed to central air conditioning in residential buildings
I know, I know... it's all a bit heavy-handed big-government stuff that wont work, says the cynic, but I do think we're in dire straits with this problem. Desperate times, and all that...

But enough from me... what does everyone else think? Are there already good ideas floating around in the vast aether of the web hinting at a solution to this conundrum?

Or are we, as I often suspect, righteously screwed? Is it time to meekly, 'un-conditionedly' surrender to our fate?

5 comments:

Advik Mathur said...

Hey Hrishikesh,
Hyderabad, we can still live without AC but in north this is impossible. This summer I (march to July) I was in a small place in UP and I just could not imagine going out of  AC room. Since there was a daily power cut of 8 hours,I didn't have much option but to crib but the summers are horrible and I always wondered why ppl should live without AC in this part of the world. Water coolers were not et all efficient in June and July. High taxes by govt is definitely not an option as It would just add on to some more money in our dear politicians pocket.

I guess the only option is to harness solar power. Do you know there are ppl who would convert your AC to a solar AC. A survey on net shows that they charge 20000 inr for the same. Instead of living without AC I would like to set up a solar AC. 
In Hyderabad and that too in Aparna, we can still live without one but definitely not in the UP. So I would suggest look into other options but never suggest the govt to tax more. We already pay enough part of our salaries for them to research if they really want. There're are many private companies who might help us to check the renewable energy resources if we are really serious about it.
-- Shweta Mathur

Ajith Kumar said...

I personally liked having A/Cs being metered, charged separately and also have them run off a sub-grid. Having said that, with limited power availability any ways, not sure how long will A/Cs actually run before they are taken off the grid :)

Our urban conglomerations have also become a lot hotter than they were a few years back with the attendant pollution and constructions every where. So an A/C has become such an essential commodity to have a good night's rest and be in a sane position to handle the next day's challenges at work effectively.

If solar power is an option (not sure how expensive and how commercially viable it is), then thats definitely something that can be implemented in places like Aparna Sarovar. Boils down to having a clear understanding of what it can and what it cannot do...

As for the A/C usage at my house, my wife and I try and only switch on during peak summer and that too
automated to switch off when the room reaches an ambient temperature. We have also invested in 5 star power savers which generally tend to consume lesser energy.

I would have to say, kudos for having survived the HYD heat without an A/C for the last few years. Once you start using it, there is no going back...

Hrishi Diwan said...

hi Shweta - I agree about the horrible summers up north, and definitely agree that no one wants to pay higher taxes :)

The problem with solar power is that it isn't practically viable for high power devices like ACs just yet. For the moment it is possible to run a simple CFL/ regular lightbulb on a standalone panel, but running an AC will certainly require a huge panel and power storage units.

Ajith - thank you for your kudos first of all! :)

I think the problem isn't really an individual usage one though. We can be as thrifty with the usage as we like, but the fact is when millions of us switch on, even if it just on peak summer days, there will be a major power crunch. The problem is a statistical one.

This is why my thoughts were going in the direction of governmental action

Parikshit said...

I have a rather us vs them view about this. Right from the time industrialization of the west, the developed world has had one of the highest per capita share of world resources. Now after so many years we have a chance of living the same life which the west took for granted for so long ( right from flush toilets to ACs and cars). And unfortunately when we are about to live that life, the whole world (including us) has come to realise that this level of consumption is a race to the bottom!

Per capita electricity consumption in US is some 15000 kWH vs 571 kWH for India. My 'us vs them' mind doesnt allow me to sacrifice my AC.

In Singapore, offices keep lights, PCs ON all night. Housing estates have Full beam lights on in the common areas. Condomoniumns dont have a ceiling fan, you are forced to use AC always. Water flows in the kitchen aall year round at a pressure which I am sure my grandmother must have always dreamt when she carried those buckets to our first floor house.

So much for global warming. I know if the whole world consumes as much as the developed world, nobody would survive. Then why should only we suffer?

Hrishi Diwan said...

Well now, see? I had a whole paragraph written up about exactly this "us vs them" thing that I eventually omitted from my post :)

I take your point about the US (and the West, or the OECD nations in general) but the problems facing India in the immediate future are not the ones caused by global warming. (Hence the beginning of the second para in this post "So forget global warming and climate change for the moment, right?"

I'm looking at this as a simple supply/ demand economic problem. X Million people using Y hundred thousand ACs require Z gigawatts of power. India has a power deficit of gazillion gigawatts, no plans to address the problem, and creaky infrastructure. Plain as that!

I can rest easy about global warming because I think resource depletion and climate change have already killed us - I'm a fatalist when it comes to the survival chances of humanity in the mid to long term. My concern is on a less than geological scale of time...

My question is how can India cope in the next 10 - 30 years?