RMI at Mumbai Climate Week: Can Today’s Air Conditioners Keep Up with a Hotter, More Humid World?

Wed, February 18
10:50 a.m.-12:15 p.m. IST
In-person
Jio World Convention Center

About This Event

Across India and much of the Global South, temperatures are rising every year — but what’s quickly becoming the real risk is that the cities are getting muggier. Humidity turns heat waves into dangerous ones, pushing the human body to the edge. And when humidity climbs and indoor spaces become clammy, today’s room air conditioners (AC) — which many households rely on for comfort — often struggle the most: they consume more energy (than what their label suggests), cost more to run and push the grid to its limits, while creating drier, (over)cooled spaces.

The need of the hour is for future ACs to reliably deliver comfort while lowering energy bills and emissions—without placing additional strain on the grid—and this Mumbai Climate Week session, hosted by RMI and CEPT University, will bring that conversation to the forefront.

It brings together manufacturers, policymakers, buyers, financiers, researchers, and civil society to explore a growing challenge: what will it take to deliver comfort that’s affordable, energy efficient, and built for the climate and buildings we actually live in? The conversation will unpack how today’s room AC products are inefficient in managing humidity—impacting health, affordability, and grid stability precisely when reliance on them is rising—and what product design, testing, policy and regulatory, and demand shifts can ensure that future products are manufactured keeping both comfort and efficiency in mind.

We will present this topic as a shared, system-wide challenge that no single group can fix alone. This session will bring stakeholders together to explore what they need from each other so that the limitations of today’s AC products can be addressed, and super-efficient, real-world-optimized ACs can move from niche ideas to mainstream solutions.

This session invites you into a conversation that affects every household, every city, and every grid — and helps us understand how we can shape the future of cooling in India and the Global South.