Poor air quality has been a concern in India for quite some time and has become even more important considering the COVID-19 pandemic. Maintaining good indoor air quality is essential for reducing pathogen spread and ensuring safety and wellbeing of occupants, as people return to their offices and public spaces. Most existing buildings in India are not equipped to establish and maintain healthy indoor air quality and need to be upgraded. Currently, there is no standardized approach to retrofitting for COVID-19 response.

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and to U.S. -India Strategic Energy Partnership (SEP) dialogue to advance the strategic and economic interests of the U.S. and India, USAID and EESL jointly launched RAISE. “RAISE (Retrofit of Air-conditioning to improve Indoor Air Quality for Safety and Efficiency)” is a national level program for healthier and greener buildings. Technical assistance to “RAISE” is being provided under the MAITREE program. This initiative is aimed at making workplaces healthier and greener. The retrofits will focus on enhanced indoor air quality (IAQ), thermal comfort, and energy efficiency (EE) in the air conditioning system.

EESL corporate office in Scope Complex was implemented as a pilot to test the integrated approach. The retrofit measures implemented in the pilot projects were:

• Increased ventilation for dilution and lower CO₂
• Filtration to minimize particulate matter, pollutants, and pathogens
• Monitoring and display of IAQ and comfort parameters

Based on the experience of the initial pilots; retrofit specifications have been developed, for nation-wide scale-up of this initiative.