Operating and maintaining refrigerator and air-conditioning units, under the purview of the servicing sector, contributes to 40 per cent of refrigerant consumption. Optimising this usage while ensuring environmental and energy preservation are important yet difficult mandates to achieve, especially as the servicing sector in India remains largely informal.

Initiating and establishing a universal certification system based on minimum criteria holds the key not only to the effective management of servicing practices, servicing quality regulations, and underlying training but also to enhanced growth in jobs for those already in the sector, providing recognition and social welfare for technicians as well as ensuring their safety and that of those in the vicinity of such servicing. This brief details such benefits as well as the architecture that can enable the Government of India to implement such a certification system in line with its policy mandate as enshrined in the India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP).