Imagine entering a store, restaurant, or office without temperature control. Uncomfortable, right? Especially in the Asia Pacific’s tropical and subtropical regions, building cooling is a business-critical expectation, not an option.
It goes beyond comfort. Establishments like hospitals and some factories require temperature control to operate properly.
Demand for cooling is expected to proliferate as economies develop, people’s livelihoods improve, and poverty decreases. Approximately two-thirds of today’s buildings will still exist in the next 20 years. On top of that, the world will add 2.4 billion square metres of new building floor area by 2060.
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The linkage between cooling demand and socio-economic development poses a sustainable development challenge, however. Temperature control, along with lighting and other building operations, already contributes 28 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions annually and is a major contributor to climate change.
The world’s decarbonisation efforts, therefore, hinge on finding ways to cool buildings, both new and existing, more efficiently.
How should we start?
“Overall, about 20% of the electricity used in buildings goes to cooling,” said Priyantha Wijayatunga, Chief of the Energy Sector at the Asian Development Bank. “By 2050, it is estimated that it could be as high as 30% under cooling demand, and in some countries, it can be even higher.”
An increase in cooling demand will mean an increase in electricity consumption, and this is where the importance of sustainable energy consumption comes in, especially for Asia Pacific countries.
“Our energy sector contributes to almost 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in the world,” Wijayatunga said. “Asia Pacific is a critical region when it comes to cutting down greenhouse gas emissions.”
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Given the region’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, much of the discussion around solutions naturally gravitates towards increasing the supply of green energy. Yet, renewable energy sources cannot solve the problem on their own. Capital investment is high, and new infrastructure will be needed to support it.
That is why Arjun Gupta, founder of India-based Smart Joules, believes energy efficiency deserves more attention.
Energy savings is not only scalable but very profitable
“One of the biggest opportunities for Smart Joules and the way we look at energy management is to attack all the sources of energy waste that we find in every business and every factory,” said Gupta.
And what they found is that there are three things that contribute to energy waste: poor cooling system design, wrong cooling equipment, and operational inefficiency.
Smart Joules looks into these three things and works with their customers to improve their current structure and guarantee a reduction in energy consumption. While the solution may sound simple, it’s the technology-enabled execution that makes Smart Joules unique.
It starts with Smart Joules taking on all the risk by investing in all the cooling equipment at no upfront cost to the building owners. The building owners would then pay Smart Joules back over time by sharing their energy savings.
This business model innovation by Smart Joules may just be the key in addressing one of the highest barriers to improving energy efficiency in building cooling; with no large capital investment, more and more building owners can afford to easily shift toward energy-efficient cooling systems.
KIMS hospital is one of the companies that Smart Joules has worked with. “Electricity accounts for almost 50 to 60 per cent of the overall expenditure,” said Dr Abhinay Bollineni, CEO at KIMS hospital. “It’s very important to get the design right, it’s very important to get the cost structure right. And it’s very important that it can sustain for a long period of time.”
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KIMS hospital ended up with savings of roughly US$50,000 yearly, which is shared with Smart Joules.
New solutions like these, while important, tend to scale slowly. How are we now supposed to make this accessible to more people?
“Partnerships are absolutely going to play a key role in making this happen,” said Gupta.
Existing companies already have the things needed to make a huge impact on a large scale. Gupta gave the example of an electric utility company with thousands of commercial customers. Working with the electric utility company instead of individual buildings or customers would give the solution instant scale.
Imagine an electric utility company with a geographical grid of about 50,000 commercial buildings and establishments. By partnering with Smart Joules and offering their solution at no upfront cost for building owners, energy-efficient cooling solutions can be instantly implemented in all of them.
For these electric companies, partnering with and sharing the upfront costs with Smart Joules to provide these solutions to their customers means implementing and investing in energy-efficient solutions at a large scale. This would result in them avoiding much more costly investments in new energy generation to meet increasing energy demand.
No upfront costs for customers, earnings from energy savings, profitable business opportunities, and reduced carbon emissions. This just might be the solution we were looking for.
The Climatic Series episode 3
In this episode of the Climatic Series, we take a look at how demand for cooling will lead to a surge in electric consumption and meet startups, investors, and other stakeholders who are working on meeting these energy needs in a more sustainable way.
Watch the talk show here
Watch the solutions showcase here
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Photo by Scott Webb from Pexels
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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by ADB Ventures
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