Air Conditioning and Climate Change – The Link You Hadn’t Thought Of

The Link Between Air Conditioning and Climate Change

We know it’s getting hotter. Heat waves in the US have pushed temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius). It’s been an almost unimaginable 124°F (51^oC) in India.

Many people simply stay indoors and crank the air conditioning.

Globally, this is another record-breaking year for average temperatures. This means more air conditioning.

Much more.

Rising Temps, Rising Demand

According to a recent paper there is enormous global potential for air conditioning.

Global incomes – as well as temperatures – are rising.

Sales of air conditioners in China for example, have nearly doubled over the last five years. More than 60 million air conditioners are sold there each year, many more than are sold annually in the United States (although that may be because so many American homes already have central air).

In some ways, that’s good. People are getting richer, and air conditioning brings great relief on hot and humid days.

The Problem with Rising Demand

But air conditioning is certainly not green and eco friendly. It uses vast amounts of electricity.

Demand for more air conditioning means demand for more electricity.

More electricity means billions of dollars of infrastructure investments (power plants).

The results? Billions of tons of increased carbon dioxide emissions.

A new study also points out that more ACs means more refrigerants that are potent greenhouse gases.

Hot, developing countries such as India will probably show massive growth in demand.

Air conditioning and climate change – a lethal combination.

The Problem – Climate Change

This is of course massively worrying from a climate point of view.

Certainly, today’s best air conditioners use less electricity than models from 20 years ago, and continued advances in energy efficiency could reduce that even more.

Continued development of solar, wind and other low-carbon sources of electricity generation could help to reduce the increases in carbon dioxide emissions.

But as long as we continue to build houses and offices in the cheapest ways possible, the demand for air conditioning – and electricity – will continue.

And as long as our power plants continue to blast out emissions (pollution) without penalty, we will continue on our path to an un-inhabitable planet (climate change).

Behavioural Change

We need to change our behaviour.

But globally, we don’t do that unless we are “incentivised” or forced to do so.

One way to do that is to place a carbon tax on electricity.

If electricity were more expensive, a whole host of things would change:

• Adoption and use of air conditioning would slow
• Innovation in energy efficiency would be spurred
• There would be a boost to renewable energy technologies, increasing their deployment.
• We would pay more attention to building design. In hot climates, we need houses with deep verandas and shutters – they kept our forebears cool without the need for air conditioning. The same with using natural shade (e.g. trees), orientation, building materials and insulation. PassivHaus design concepts can have huge global impacts on energy consumption.

We need efficient markets if we are going to stay cool without heating up the planet.

It’s not nice to think of paying more for electricity – but cheap electricity and lots of pollution on a dying planet won’t be nice either.

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Warm regards,

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