September 9, 2024September 9, 2024
For a glimpse of the future, just head to Phoenix, Arizona, on a hot August day. Hundreds of thousands of air conditioners are blasting away, providing a pleasant, air-conditioned atmosphere for most of the city’s 1.6 million residents. Phoenix residents rest or work at 24°C while it’s 40°C outside. There’s one small problem: the heat emissions from the air conditioning compressors. raise the temperature of the cityone degree above the suffocating 40ºC. So hundreds of thousands of thermostats turn a tenth of a turn and the devices increase their power, thus increasing the dose of heat they send into the atmosphere.
A London, UK, The demand for cold air in summer is going from very little to importantLast summer, the national electricity system in England and Wales had to start up a coal power plant to meet the new demand for air conditioning. Europe (except for some southern countries) never made widespread use of air conditioning, and its percentages of equipment were very small. However, Eurostat reports that The need for home cooling has tripled over the past 40 years. The number of equipment installed has doubled since 1990and the pace is expected to accelerate in the coming years.
In Spain, air conditioning is growing at a good speed, “becoming the largest market for air conditioning due to the general increase in average temperaturesAs one industry expert says, “The heat makes almost all our problems go away.” It is quite possible that the sharp border that currently exists between regions with lots of air conditioning (the south and east, with Madrid) and regions with very little (the north and west) will begin to blur. For example, if in Bilbao (which once reached 40ºC this summer) they start to get excited about the fresh air from the machine.
The largest market for air conditioning is currently in India, with a still very low percentage of households equipped, but growing rapidly. Overall, it is quite possible that in a few years we will go from around 2 billion units installed worldwide to a figure that will double or triple. The associated electricity consumption, which is currently just under 5%, will grow in proportion. And right now a third of electricity on our planet is produced by burning coal, 20% by natural gas and 10% by nuclear power plants. The good news is that more than a third of electricity It is manufactured using the power of water, wind, sun and biomass and this percentage is growing steadily.
It looks like we’re going to a world with artificial climateactually two climates: inside our homes, cold air produced using electricity, and outside our homes, increasingly warm air, partly due to greenhouse gas emissions produced by the demand for cold air, when the necessary electricity is generated using fossil fuels.
What can we do? There are actually many solutions on the table, and the first is to recognise fresh air as a right, just as keeping the house warm in winter is recognised as a right. From there, we will have to find a way to maintain a pleasant indoor climate without spoiling the outdoor climate or the general climate of our planet.
There are many solutions. These include cooling that is not based on an electric compressor (such as that which uses evaporation), passive cooling solutions (from blinds and awnings to high-altitude fresh air collectors), ultra-efficient compressors, integral air conditioning systems based on heat pumps, air conditioning units connected directly to a solar panel, a “new air conditioning culture” that handles it skilfully, increasing the supply of renewable electricity, or green urban planning initiatives to reduce the heat island effect in cities. Vegetation is key, as can be seen by taking a walk through any park on the hottest day of the summer.
