Tabreed, IFC to invest $400 mn for cooling infra in India, Southeast Asia

UAE's National Central Cooling Company or Tabreed, and International Finance Corporation (IFC) on Wednesday announced plans to invest USD 400 in India and South-East Asian countries to build cooling service infrastructure.

Tabreed and IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, have formed a joint venture to establish a district energy investment platform in Singapore, as per an official statement.

The JV will invest in district cooling, trigeneration and cooling as a service offering with a primary focus on India followed by other South-East Asian countries, it said.

"Platform to target USD 400 million in capital deployment in India and other South-East Asian countries," the statement said, without specifying the exact allocation to the countries.

Tabreed has ongoing development activities in India and the platform will build on the same after the establishment of its wholly-owned subsidiary to install energy-efficient end to end cooling as a service offering through an outsourced utility model for real estate developments, new urban masterplans and ongoing redevelopments across target cities.

The government India Cooling Action Plan' forecasts an eight-fold increase in demand through to 2038 and the commercial real estate sector alone estimated to add 100 million refrigeration tons in capacity during this period, it said.

The cooling as a service market is at a relatively embryonic stage in India and real estate developers make their own individual and varied cooling technology choices, funding Capex from their balance sheets to thereafter work with a fragmented ecosystem of service providers leaving significant headroom, the statement said.

"The size and dynamism of India and other South-East Asian countries will keep them at the heart of the global energy system with all roads to a successful global clean energy transition going via India," Tabreed's chief executive Bader Saeed Al Lamki said.