Southeast Asia needs similar cooling as heat waves can be dangerous | Rare Techy

Heating solutions and opportunities in Southeast Asia

In 2019, India will become one of the first countries in the world to launch a comprehensive cooling action plan – the India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP), an ambitious initiative to address the country’s heating needs while reducing climate effects. In June 2022, Bangladesh published its own National Cooling Plan, and in October last year Pakistan announced that it would adopt one by 2026.

For these plans to help vulnerable people like Kumar, countries in the region need to rethink how they deliver infrastructure and services in areas such as housing, agriculture and health.

Look at the cities of South Asia, for example, many of which are plagued by extreme poverty and poor housing conditions. More than 200 million new houses need to be built in South Asia by 2050 to meet housing needs. This will have the opportunity to change the direction of urban development in the region and adopt strategies that focus on heat recovery. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are responding to this challenge with affordable housing programs.

In India, 10 million new houses need to be built every year to keep up with housing demand, and the government’s affordable housing program has an opportunity to introduce environmentally friendly solutions and passive cooling techniques – to avoid heat in buildings – to build. and urban planning. This means using insulating materials, such as straw, combined with materials that have a high thermal mass. According to an analysis by the World Bank Group, space heating in India alone presents a $1.5 trillion investment opportunity by 2040, of which $1.25 trillion is earmarked for residential buildings.

There is an opportunity to scale up space cooling technologies in building projects across the region. In Bangladesh, where the urban population is expected to increase from 31 million in 2000 to 65 million in 2020, the World Bank estimates that 250,000 new houses will need to be built each year to meet the weakness. . In Pakistan, the government launched a housing program in 2019 to provide five million houses for poor and low-income communities by 2030.