Europe's crusade against air conditioning is insane | Hacker News Reader

Europe's crusade against air conditioning is insane

noahpinion.blog

41 pointspaulpauper93 comments

Essentially, wherever AC gets rolled out, heat-related death plunges. Taking Barreca’s estimate and applying it to Europe suggests that as many as 100,000 European lives — 0.013% of the population — could be saved every year if the 80% of European households who don’t have AC were to get it.

Is the effect strong enough to show up in life expectancy tables? Average lifespan is already quite a bit longer in much of Western Europe than the US (https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1lih4a0/oc...) that it surprises me that this would push it even farther. Am I wrong to be skeptical?

For that matter, does it show up in differences between US states? Personally I've lived in 9 different states, 4 which are in the top ten for life expectancy, and I haven't had central air conditioning in any of them. Is this an anomaly? Is there any correlation between air conditioning use within the US and life expectancy?

I doubt it matters much to overall life expectancy, since the people effected most are the very elderly who will die soon anyway, if not from heat then from catching a sniffle or slipping in their shower. For young able bodied people to die from heat requires very extreme temperatures or a severe lapse in judgment.

Woah, I've lived all over the US myself, and the only place I never had air conditioning was Alaska.

Guess what got installed in a lot of cabins this year by people I know in AK?

Air conditioning!

> I believe attitudes toward air-conditioning are class markers in many European countries. Air-conditioning is seen as prototypically American

Anecdotally, from the Europeans I know, this is true. When the topic comes up, I will mention that we almost universally have air conditioning here in Canada. (As we do.) After any initial surprise fades over AC in a country generally known for being cold a retort comes usually along the lines of "well you're practically Americans culturally anyway". That may be part of it, sure.

But I think it's mostly that electricity is cheap here, while it reaches almost 40 °C in summer.

Speaking of electricity, the article doesn't really mention energy costs. Here in Canada I don't know many who don't have AC because they don't like it philosophically, but I know some people who don't have one, or who don't use their AC as much as they would like, because they just can't afford it. And it's not the AC itself. It's the electricity. A window unit running on high will consume its weight in electricity in one summer, or sooner.

And that's at Canadian electricity prices, where we pay about 0.10 CAD (0.06 EUR / 0.07 USD) per kWh here. To run AC like Canadians do (often with central air to cool the entire home) could cost potentially thousands of dollars a year, if we paid German electric rates.

Air conditioning has long been very rare in homes in Vancouver, but that's been changing in the past decade after a series of summer heat waves and rising temperatures. It's become a problem as many landlords and stratas ban the installation or operation of air conditioners, especially in older buildings where the wiring wasn't intended to support air conditioning loads. This has led to recent court battles where renters try to fight the bans, and also resulted in British Columbia updating the building code to ensure that all new buildings have at least one climate-controlled room (although it can be passively cooled).

It’s the same story all along the west coast of the U.S.

There are high CoL areas with many rentals where up until 10 years ago the climate has been mild all summer. Seattle, Portland, SF, down to LA.

Landlords have no desire to update their properties. Why would they when the investment home they bought in 1980 for $70k is now worth 1.5M and bringing in $3000/mo in income? That’s just taking money out of their poor empty pockets.

There are many trending indicators I can see building up toward a big anti-capitalist movement and this kind of thing is top of mind. The utter disregard some landlords have toward the well being of their tenants…

It's because Europe has managed for the last, what, 30,000 years without AC even around the Med when "normal" temperatures reach 40C under the Sun in summer.

When AC appeared it was a luxury that became affordable so people could do "like Americans".

Now, serious heatwaves are become usual so this may change. But on the other hand, adequate architecture and practices may help, too. Even traditional ones vs "modern" overuse of glass, for example.

> It's because

Why do you think it's "because" of this?

Humans survived without computers for that long too... but I don't see anyone yelling to abolish them.

Because I am from Southern Europe so I do know that AC was inexistant in homes and even cars when I was growing up, and AC in homes appeared, not because they became needed, but because it was "cool", so to speak, people came to be able to afford it, and it spread from abroad.

On top of that now AC also clashes with general policies in Europe to cut power use, and EVs take priority. Especially on the left AC is seen as very not green.

Actually even the Roman empire had AC. Of course, not electrical, but they definitely designed buildings to naturally develop airflow in high temperatures. Basic systems were in place even in slave housing, where they used the water supply to cool things down (water flowed constantly 24/7/365 through toilets, and before getting to the toilet, cooled things down)

There were even quite extreme air conditioning designs for the wealthy who had water flow through the walls and floors of entire buildings, even pumped systems that automatically switched from using heated water to cooled water depending on inside temperature. Long tunnels on higher floors with water cooling that got air from specific places to flow into rooms in villas. And, of course, the systems in Rome's palaces are extreme.

So if what you're saying is true, without even passive cooling, your housing is worse than even the standards for Roman slaves.

Yes of course, traditional homes have thick walls and good air flow, and shutters (what I alluded to in my original comment). Obviously that is not what "AC" is...

Using running water to cool down buildings definitely is AC.

Living in the Med (Cyprus), I remember having ac all my life. I think the more heat waves become common the more air-conditioning will. It's just that it hasn't been necessary in central Europe until now.

I stayed in a house in Rome that kept out the fierce summer heat, because of thick walls. AC would be redundant. In other places, like Hong Kong, the thin walls of the apartments need AC to remain liveable in summer. I've read about the lack of shade in many built environments. Seen TV shows where someone builds floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows in a location that would be below 0 for much of the year. Unsustainable construction drives AC use and greenhouse gas emission that makes the problem worse.

Glass windows can be surprisingly efficient insulators. Have you seen multilayered argon-filled glazing? Or vacuum glazing? The best are as efficient as a triple-brick wall.

> I stayed in a house in Rome that kept out the fierce summer heat, because of thick walls.

Doesn’t work when the overnight low is 20C

I would need a sweater with 20C...

you won't when the thick walls and all objects are radiating 30C heat at you

Most (not all) old euro cities don't get a good breeze unless they're built on the windward side of a hill because (generalizing here): the streets aren't a grid and everything is built to the same height.

plus the humidity is still there without aircon. 20C humid != 20C dry.

You maybe stayed in that house in Rome but didn’t live in it. I grew up in a 100+ year old stone and mortar house with almost 1.5m thick walls and relatively good window insulation. The problem is the thermal capacity of those walls. When they heat up during a hot summer spell it’s like living in an oven. You cannot sleep most nights during the summer. Something similar happens in the winter too, if you go on a vacation. The house gets so cold you need couple of days to warm it up again. When my parents installed AC it was heaven during summer.

We should have AC everywhere where night temperature is regularly over 20C part of the year. I get 30C some days almost every summer but almost never over room temp at night - meaning I can easily just open a window in the evening and the house is cool.

The only real problem with more widespread AC is it might lead to the short term win long term loss where people build cheaply (without _at least_ 300mm/1ft insulation and triple glass windows etc) and then spend continuously on heating and cooling instead. The simple solution to this in places where AC is banned: allow it only for well insulated buildings. Yes it’s where it’s least needed but it gives incentive to fix the root cause first.

> regularly over 20C

I chuckled. Here in Chennai we (speaking for my family and a few others, I didn't ask everyone) set the AC to 24C when we use it, and don't really use AC when it's "cool outside", which is like 26-28C.

Ceiling fans are on 24x7 though, even when the AC is running.

26-28 daytime temp is lovely. 26-28 at night would be horrible without AC though.

Here the main issue is humidity. Even on low temp days (relatively speaking) if it's humid you usually need AC to be comfortable.

And it's humid a lot of the time.

> We should have AC everywhere where night temperature is regularly over 20C part of the year.

A dew point temperature (~heat index, humidex) would be more meaningful than simple air temperature.

The conversation has also moved on -- I have a heat pump (split unit) in my apartment, and my monthly power bill has always hovered around $40 in the summer here in WA.

Now, arguably the capex for a heat pump is substantial, and that's a valid point. Also WA summers are not that hot outside of a few really warm weeks (in the 90s).

All that said, the energy consumption (and thus costs) of running AC is much lower these days.

Heat pumps are to traditional A/Cs what LED lights are to incandescents.

In my cold(er) part of the world no one has a dedicated AC but lots of people have heat pumps for heating, which can be used as an AC during the (annoyingly few) hot days. But while their efficiency is great (3+ kW heat for 1kW electricity) I think most units are less efficient when used for cooling? Might be wrong though.

My electricity bill with heat pump heating (one exhaust heat pump and one split) and relatively cheap electricity is still pretty substantial. 25000 kWh per year for 150sqm/1600sq ft. Usually pay $0.30/kWh for power.

Cheaper to overprovision solar panels than build class A+++ home.

Dunno about all Europe, but I visited a few recently built apartments in Belgium lately and all of them have heat pumps, this is the only way one can get the A energy efficiency ratings.

Heat pumps work as aircos or heaters but are more efficient.

This. The article is just FUD, and full of wrong assumptions and conclusions.

I have de warmtepomp and it doesn't really AC. It pumps the water through the floors (warm in winter, cold in summer) and cools the house down a few degrees, so when the outsides are 35C for a few days, it's enough to close the windows to have the house somewhere around 25 insides, but it doesn't really get it cold.

I had a proper split system AC before and it's a different thing entirely. Press a button and have a flow of freezing cold air in the face.

Relevant XKCD: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3099:_Neighbor-So...

The article wants to cherry-pick to make it seem like no one in Europe is installing heat-pumps. My partner works in energy research and the prevailing advice seems to be ‘insulation first, remediation second’. That's it. We build much better houses, and the European South is installing more and more AC; but that's also where solar plays a bigger role.

Anecdata, but our A-rated apartment in Belgium rides heatwaves like it's nothing. We're on the last floor and in the corner of a building that gets sun from midday to sundown. A floor fan to move air around and that's it, the building's built-in ventilation and good insulation keep us going. It gets to 26C inside max, and that's after 2–3 weeks of outside temps above 32C (after the brick mass has absorbed too much heat that radiates inwards). In winter we barely need heating.

> Heat pumps work as aircos

In France, tax credits were denied for air-to-air heat pumps that could also cool (which they all can).

In 2016 I built a house in Belgium. Extremely energy efficient (solar, air to water heat-pump, incredibly thick insulation, ...).

Your energy-score had to be below a certain limit (where 0 is neutral).

Now, we wanted to install AC, but that would actually bump our energy-score, because the idea is that if you need AC you didn't insulate enough.

Except... when you have such thick walls the house overheated starting mid-spring until mid-fall.

Can't you just reverse your heat pump ? I also have a air-water one and it can work as an AC too (provided you have adequate radiators).

We wanted floor heating, so no radiators. And with that one of the concerns is condensation, so you cannot go too cold.

I do remember going into the software and overriding the fact that it could cool, but only after the house was certified.

You mention radiators. The ones on the wall with hot water running through them? Don't they need high temperatures to work efficiently? When we ordered ours, you couldn't even get radiators as air-to-water only did low temperatures.

But I don't live there anymore. I eventually ended up in Phoenix. Now the AC is too powerful, as it is only single stage...

The problem with heat isn't only temperature, but in many places, it's the accompanying humidity. Heat and humidity are energy sapping and drains you of the ability to do highly focused intellectual work. You pay a price in productivity.

I was once working out of the corporate HQ of one of the largest multinational companies in Germany, and despite the modern buildings, the offices had no A/C and it was hot in the summer. Germans are against A/C for various reasons: (1) it's environmentally unfriendly; (2) it's only a few weeks in the summer; (3) Continuous cold air on skin is unhealthy. (4) You get used to it.

There are varying degrees of truth here, but for me, it didn't matter: I couldn't do intense focused work. That to me was too huge a cost.

This article is so stupid for not mentioning energy costs. It's like Europeans don't use AC because they want to degrowth or something.

Energy costs are high because of the European culture of degrowth - Germany shut down all its nuclear plants in favour of buying Russian gas and oil.

Germany also was the biggest country for solar energy, what it's essentially making a huge chunk of the energy production in summer in Europe, what started the industrialization of solar panels, making them dirt cheap. (Also Europe is not just Germany making a dumb decision before)

Solar has obvious downsides, but it happens to be essentially the perfect source of power for running AC. Hot weather has a very strong correlation with sunny weather! So blaming overly enthusiastic solar adoption for reticence to use AC doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

The dynamic energy price in Germany in sunny days even goes to negative: they pay you for using energy! Crazy. But there is lots and lots of solar systems. I know relatively many people installing 2 way heat pumps, so it may be changing.

Not really. The plan is to change for renewables. If they will be able to is another discussion.

Was there a plan ir just idea and lots of emotions?

Well. They sold it as a plan let’s say…

Nobody (no mainstream party that is actually in government) is really taking degrowth as a goal.

The purpose of a system is what it does.

also the additional heat you produce outside of the building... making some AC-dense city areas even more unbearable at 40°C than they already are.

Energy costs are much lower with heat pumps. But cost of heat pump is higher up front.

Growing in Poland I'd say Eastern Europe was until recently too poor to afford AC, but also the climate was indeed less extreme just 30 years ago. Nowadays most new detached houses do have AC in at least one room (bedroom or living room) - mine included. Alternatively many new houses have heat pumps. Apartament blocks are less consistent in that matter, but there are interesting initiatives as well - like using combined-heat-and-power citywide heating installations for cooling (by pumping cold water through them).

I moved to Spain 3 years ago and still think it's kind of nonsense in Central and Eastern Europe.

Today it was 19/10 degrees Celsius (68/50 F) in Warsaw. With these temperatures you could only use AC to warm your home.

I understand there are more hot days in Poland now, but it makes no economic sense to spend $1-2k on AC and only turn it on 15 times a year.

First thing is to build to keep homes cool in summer and warm in winter. Traditional Mediterranean homes were built like that along with providing good air flow.

Nowadays it's all glass, which means lethal greenhouse in summer, with or without climate warming.

I recall when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, there were a handful of stories that came out about some of the oldest home in the area being built in such a manner that they had great air flow, were oriented towards the sun in such a way to keep warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Of course the main thrust of those stories was that these homes — critical to their survival — was that they weren’t built in a flood plain. But few to none had AC, because they didn’t need it.

Its the hubris of man that we stopped building our houses with respect for the weather. As we’ve left that behind we’re losing that ability to our collective detriment.

We can and should do better.

I live in an southern EU country (Bulgaria). Up until some point in time AC was too expensive and not widely adopted in residential context. This started changing more then 10 years ago and now when almost the whole summer is a constant heatwave nobody rents an apartment without an AC. There is another factor though - in the capital Sofia, using AC for heating in winder is actually cheaper than the central heating which is the alternative.

We travel to Greece a lot, and I've never seen a place without an AC there either.

> Air conditioning, when it appeared in Europe, was seen as a luxury or even a health risk.

They're not entirely wrong. A/C is often installed without adequate ventilation, and elevated indoor CO₂ levels are not great for your well-being. HRV (heat recovery ventilation) solves the problem, but it's currently a niche technology compared to mini splits.

I own both AC and HRV and HRV is not enough for cooling. Single split unit has max air flow of around 500m3/h for a single room. My HRV has max air flow of 350m3/h for the whole house - it's not able to substantially cool anything.

The point of HRV is to provide fresh air, not cooling. An air conditioner provides 0 m3/h of fresh air, so 350 m3/h is a substantial upgrade.

This, albeit HRV can sometimes have bypass mode that doesn’t harvest the exhaust heat. That said you need much larger vents for heating/cooling than ventilation.

AC is still viewed almost like plague (or a microwave) in eastern europe.

> Degrowth frames climate change as a problem of personal overconsumption and extravagance to be curbed by austere self-restraint and government policy, rather than as a technological problem to be overcome by installing green energy

The elephant in the room is human overpopulation. Every doubling of the population and we'd have to halve our "personal overconsumption and extravagance" to keep the environmental effects the same. We've had more than one doubling in the time I've been alive.

But somehow large families are still celebrated instead of being treated as the eternal "personal overconsumption and extravagance" that they create.

The link to degrowth (and I did go read the author's post they linked to on the topic) was a stretch.

I'm British so pretty far north so YMMV, but while it can get hot here these days, it's very rarely hot enough to justify owning an air con unit for the whole year. There's probably 2 weeks of the year at most (and I'm on the south coast) where I feel like I need air con at home. And being on the south coast means the sea and it's breeze are a 10 minute walk away anyways. This does feel like it's changing every year though, definitely not a bad time to get into the AC business.

Originally from the UK I've lived in Australia for the last thirty years in a fibro cottage without A/C where the summer temperature reaches 35C/95F inside the house and to manage I just strip down and handle it.

I do have one mechanical fan for my yoga practice.

Oh, and the winter temp reaches 7C/45F and I don't use heating either.

"Whatever the reason, the resistance to AC technology is making Europe a more impoverished civilization. It’s a major reason why Europe now feels shabbier and more hardscrabble than America..."

It feels shabbier and more hardscabble than America now? That's news to me.

It was brutal in Switzerland during hot humid summers. Even commercial buildings had "water heat pumps" that left some parts of buildings at ~35C. They did put real A/C to newer trams and trains though.

Haven't heard of a crusade against AC, sounds a bit bullshit to be honest. Maybe it's Spain/Italy thing, I dunno.

Where I live now the governments are all about energy-neutral houses and replacing gas boilers used to heating with electric thermal pumps (which do the cooling too, just not as good as AC). and solar panels.

The eastern part of the continent went all for AC in the 2000s and the main complaint I remember is how atrocious they look when installed chaotically on building facades.

It's not the first time I hear about a "crusade" or some kind of government oppression on Europeans against AC, but I don't really know why this belief exists.

I think almost all homes built today rely on heat pumps, it's almost mandatory with the recent energy efficiency requirements.

Well, I imagine the municipality would have a problem with people putting those split systems on facades and drilling holes in historical buildings ( in more civilized places of the continent, where rules matter ). We don't have those things that are put into the window frame, like in US.

As far as crusades go, some local governments really hate cars for a good reason, but the AC story is something new to me.

Not almost mandatory, absolutely mandatory - hp, hrv, triple glazing, pressure testing for leaks. Can’t even have real rangehood extractor - filter only.

People complain that it’s too expensive to build.

I had a roommate in the US who used to leave the AC on all day because he loved coming home after 12 hours outside to a cold apartment.

In an apartment that would probably be maybe $100/month unless your electricity is very expensive. Low price to pay for comfort.

$100 of power in europe translates to about $200 which translates to $600 given lower incomes.

Infrared blaster is $20 and allows to control your AC/HP from anywhere using your phone.

I have read that the French media have a talking point about AC being dangerous because walking into a cool building during a hot day might harm people through "thermal shock". It's almost too stupid for me to believe this is genuinely a claim made in France.

Perhaps some people in Europe are reacting against AC in a very silly way because they associate AC with America and some sort of national pride or ego gets in the way of rational thought about the subject.

> the French media have a talking point about AC being dangerous because walking into a cool building during a hot day might harm people through "thermal shock".

I'd be interested to know on which media you have heard it because I haven't. Maybe some obscure programme on Cnews or some channel like that had an "expert" say that once. Some people will be worried about catching a cold, at most.

I read it through HN a few weeks ago, a Wall Street Journal article mentioned it. Maybe the WSJ made it up to make France seem stupid.

Maybe it's also a language problem as "choc thermique" is technically "thermal shock", but the French "choc" doesn't have the medical undertones of English "shock". It just means that you go from hot to cold or the contrary. Anyway it's not common to think that entering a place with AC is actually dangerous.

I think you’re referring to this post of mine :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44657309

> It's almost too stupid for me to believe this is genuinely a claim made in France.

I agree with you, but at the same time I recall my last trip to NY 20 years ago. It was end of summer, so kinda hot, and many times I walked into buildings that would shower you at the entrance with <16C AC air, it literally felt like stepping into a freezer room. I felt cold in many shops after a 10m stay, and I like cold. I'm not sure that's still the case, but I can see where that's coming from (and don't get me wrong, I need AC to survive when temps are above 27C). Removing humidity and bringing temps down in the 21~24C range would be plenty enough.

Wait... aren't AC's one of the prevalent causes of global warming, so in effect partly causing more heat related deaths? And what about stress caused by noise pollution from AC's? I think we need less units - not more.

They are usually running during summer when sun is shining, so technically energy can be easily covered by renewables.

Technically, but in practice.... On top of that the production of AC's is also a factor, and there is the spilling of the refrigerant liquids that only recently became much less damaging.

I’ve wondered about this many times. How much would the world cool if we turned the HVAC off for a week, a month, permanently? I mean, we watched as the natural world breathed a sigh of relief on 9/11 as all planes were grounded. We watched nature reassert itself in places humans vacated during COVID. So why not HVAC?

It’s not. Heat pumps are simply better than AC.

AC is air-to-air heat pumps.

That makes about as much sense as "laptops are simply better than computers." They are implementations of the same technology.

No they’re not. Heat pumps are more efficient and also heat. Air conditioners do not.

There’s caveat that HPs for very cold climates use different refrigerant.

To add to this:

- we should also mandate external window shutters on all buildings so that the sun heats that and not the apartment/house

- we should also mandate that parking lots are always covered with trees, especially when they are close to buildings. Look at this bullshit: https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1955506095239336137

Edit: as someone else mentioned. Also: thicker walls.

And only after all this is implemented can we start a discussion of whether AC is needed. Yes, right now it's a necessity across most of Europe

I stayed in a older building in Tuscany Italy once and the walls were thick, so it felt cooler inside. That said, the air is still muggy so even though the temperatures were bearably, the humidity was not.

I slept with a fan on and still woke up drenched.

> You might think Europe is simply too far north to need AC. But latitude is no longer the defense against heat that it used to be

Naa I'm pretty sure that is the reason. I live in central Germany and the summers are sure getting hotter but it's fine. I was in Japan a few weeks ago and good lord it was like 40 degrees (104 Fahrenheit I guess) plus high humidity. If it would get that hot I would definitely get AC.

Come on, as if people would die of heat stroke just not to use that pesky Yankee tech. Europe has adopted tons of American technology. Honestly I wasn't even aware that AC is American. I'm sure as the summers get hotter here more and more people will get AC as well.

> die of heat stroke just not to use that pesky Yankee tech

Japanese tech is the best for temperate New Zealand homes. Called a heatpump here but also has aircon functionality i.e. electric heating in winter and aircon in summer on hot days as necessary. Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Toshiba and Fujitsu etc. Not sure I've ever seen a Carrier here (and I can't even name other US brands). There are also some cheaper Chinese brands.

Part of the problem on forums is that the wording varies by country and hot US states install A/C only systems: which you would never do in temperate climes. The word split is uncommonly used here (as a kiwi I'm not entirely certain of the meaning).

They're willing to kill a hundred thousand of their own a year for their religion.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152766

The difference from Inca sacrifices is the age of the offering.

For a lot of Europeans it's as simple as "air conditioning = USA = bad"

>Essentially, wherever AC gets rolled out, heat-related death plunges. Taking Barreca’s estimate and applying it to Europe suggests that as many as 100,000 European lives — 0.013% of the population — could be saved every year if the 80% of European households who don’t have AC were to get it.

There is another side to this coin. How many extra people will die each year due to the additional radiative forcing caused by emissions due to the AC usage? Presenting one side without attempting to estimate the other side is not a fair comparison.

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