State-owned Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) has invited bids for installing almost 3.7 million filtration systems to be fitted with air-conditioners and ventilation equipment in government office buildings.

It is EESL’s first phase of the program titled Retrofit of Airconditioning to Improve Indoor Air Quality for Safety and Efficiency (RAISE).

The company has divided the country into two clusters based on the bids: Cluster one comprises Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, and Gujarat.

Cluster two includes Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telengana, Odisha Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and North East.

The earnest money deposit (EMD) required to participate in cluster one is ₹4.3 million (~$58,585), and for the second cluster, it has been set at ₹2.5 million (~$27,930). All medium and small-scale enterprises will be exempt from the payment of EMD and bid processing fee.

The last date for the submission of bids is September 18, 2020.

EESL will select its vendors on the lowest bid basis. However, if more than one bidder qualifies for a cluster, EESL can include up to six bidders, provided they agree to match the price offered by the lowest bidder. The lowest bidder will receive the largest proportion of the total order.

The move is to address poor air quality concerns and avert the risk of airborne transmission of COVID-19. It is part of EESL’S overall initiative to improve indoor air quality for safety and efficiency developed for healthy and energy-efficient buildings in partnership with the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Maitree program.

Apart from improving indoor air quality, the retrofits will enhance the thermal comfort and energy efficiency of air conditioning systems. These are for buildings predominantly served by a central air conditioning system with additional split ACs in some areas.

EESL initiated a pilot retrofit project with installations of a network of air quality monitoring systems in the first week of June.

“The results of the retrofits were encouraging. Air quality in offices has dramatically improved with over 90-95% reduction in pollutants and steady maintenance of a healthy indoor environment,” a senior EESL executive said.

According to a report ‘The State of Global Air’ released in 2019, air pollution is estimated to have caused nearly 4.9 million deaths in 2017, with India accounting for 1.2 million, which was the highest in the world. The Delhi government has also come up with several measures to encourage the use of clean energy to fight air pollution.

In 2019, India launched a program to battle the increasing level of pollutants in the air. The National Clean Air Program (NCAP) is a time-bound national level strategy for pan India implementation to tackle the increasing air pollution problem across the country.