Spatializing Air Conditioner and Evaporative Cooler Ownership, Use, and Inequality across 400+ Districts Pan-India: Unpacking Social, Environmental, and Urbanization Correlates

Abstract Cities/districts in rapidly urbanizing, developing nations, such as India, are grappling with extreme heat and a potential tripling of electricity use for cooling by 2050, estimated by global models. Yet, little is known about the adoption of air conditioners (ACs) versus evaporative coolers (ECs), nor inequality in their use across income groups and climate regions, at the district-level pan-India with diverse social, environmental, and urbanization (SEU) features. This paper contributes a new systems-level method to spatialize district-level household-average AC and EC ownership, and inequality in their electricity usage, across 400+ districts pan-India, combining SEU-based analyses of large-scale household surveys with Random Forest Modeling and Propensity Score Matching. Key findings are (1) National household-average ownership in 2022 of EC-only, AC-plus-EC, and AC-only is 18%, 3%, and 4% respectively, with high-income, high-humidity, urban districts showing 10× AC ownership, e.g., 32% in Chennai, reflecting urban futures; (2) Our AC-versus-EC model, for the first time, demonstrates dependence on both local humidity and air temperature in addition to income and other social variables with high predictive accuracy (kappa = 0.76); (3) Differential electricity use for cooling varied by income with highest-income homes consuming Δ = 178 kWh/capita/year for ACs and 56 kWh/capita/year for ECs compared to homes without cooling appliances nationally, while mid-income homes consumed 56% and 64% less for ACs and ECs, respectively; these patterns varied across hot-humid, hot-dry, and composite-climate regions across India. These results highlight the low penetration of ACs and their highly frugal, unequal use in India. Together, they lay the foundation for urban futures modeling at local scales pan-India, incorporating highly heterogeneous and massive anticipated changes in urbanization, income, and climate, with methods translatable globally.