Kigali at Ten: A Climate Treaty That Works and the Half of India's Cooling Problem It Cannot Reach

KIGALI FIXES THE GAS, NOT THE GRID

Start with the commitment. Under the Kigali Amendment, which India ratified in 2021, India must freeze its HFC production and consumption in 2028 at a baseline drawn from 2024 to 2026. It must then cut by 10% in 2032, 20% in 2037, 30% in 2042 and 85% by 2047.

The limits are measured by the warming impact of each gas, not by tonnage. Now the data. Cooling already takes slightly more than a tenth of India's annual electricity demand, according to the IEA. On hot summer nights, air-conditioners can account for as much as a third of power use.

Under current policies, cooling demand is projected to more than double by 2035.

Why

Kigali works The treaty's design explains its success and it is worth naming each piece:

• Binding schedules: specific dates and percentages, not voluntary pledges.
• Differentiated timelines: developing countries such as India, in Group 2, got later baselines and freezes, so their industries had time to adjust.
• Money attached: the Multilateral Fund, operating since 1991, pays developing countries' agreed incremental costs of compliance, including factory conversions and technician training.
• A proven base: the Montreal Protocol has already eliminated nearly 99% of controlled ozone-depleting substances and the ozone layer is recovering. That combination is why full Kigali compliance could avoid 0.3°C to 0.5°C of warming by 2100.

Where the

chain breaks for India Cooling warms the planet in two ways. HFCs that leak from equipment are potent greenhouse gases; some common ones, such as HFC-134a, have a warming potential 1,430 times that of carbon dioxide. Equipment also consumes electricity, much of it still generated from fossil fuels.

Kigali addresses only the first channel. The second, indirect emissions from power use, sits outside the treaty. For a country whose cooling demand will more than double in a decade, that is the larger risk. UNEP and the IEA estimate that pairing the HFC transition with better efficiency could roughly double the climate benefit.

There is also a timing trap. Equipment bought before India's first cuts may stay in use well into the 2030s. Every inefficient air-conditioner sold during the baseline years locks in both refrigerant and electricity demand for a decade or more.

The equity tension Rising heat makes cooling a necessity, not a luxury, for millions of households.

Expensive, efficient equipment risks pricing out the people who most need relief. India's answer has been the India Cooling Action Plan of 2019, which links efficiency, refrigerant transition and affordability in one framework.

Why this matters For the exam, Kigali is the clearest example of a climate treaty designed to deliver.

India's challenge is to extend that design logic, binding targets plus finance plus differentiated timelines, to the energy side of cooling that the treaty never reached.