New Delhi, June 13 -- No doubt, many of us could plead guilty to air-conditioner (AC) overuse. It is easily done by setting ACs at a temperature below the 20-24deg Celsius band of human comfort; this keeps their compressors working overtime. So, in a country short of energy, do we need regulatory action?

This week, India's power minister Manohar Lal Khattar said that the Centre plans to mandate standards under which ACs can only be set in a range from 28deg to 20deg Celsius, no lower. The idea is to conserve electricity. Well known as power guzzlers, these contraptions account for about a fifth of India's peak demand, placed at about 250 gigawatts (GW) last summer and projected to rise by 8-10% this year.

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