Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity
humanprogress.org
humanprogress.org
What makes the situation much worse here is we have insanely good insulation on the buildings. They trap heat for the cold winters, but the walls just maintain all the heat during the summers. A new approach is needed to make it livable here.
In my own apartment I am not able to create a cross-breeze through strategic window opening to try and bring in cooler air from outside, so I've resorted to opening a window on one side of the apartment and using a Vornado fan to push air out the window on another side of the apartment - creating a pressurized system.
You can actually install a heat pump in most apartment buildings, as long as it's on the balcony and not visible from the street (=below waist-level). Main reason you wouldn't, is condensate output which has to be piped indoors or into a heated drain during the winter. Or you just pipe it into your balcony's rainwater drain and accept that you can't use the heatpump below 0C.
Same for Germany, at least in many places. And if your building gets reclassified as being under Denkmalschutz (cultural heritage management) you've won in the Lottery of Pain.
Yes, there are numerous reasons why this is harder to do than just doing it ad-hoc per apartment, but if we’re to see it as infrastructure, it should receive the same level of consideration as other utilities.
I had a similar situation involving electricity when living in Los Angeles, in the Valley. Electricity costs were averaged across all units, there were no individual meters per unit. My family of 3 humans in a 2 bedroom apartment consumed a lot less than a 10 human family in a 3 bedroom, and that was a thing. I subsidized their electricity usage. This involved things like pool heating, grass maintenance which I never cared about or used. This was at Bella Vista near Warner Ridge. https://www.equityapartments.com/los-angeles/woodland-hills/...
In the US, utility companies don't bill you for actual usage, they have "predictions" on what you may use. IME. You can burn candles and eat canned food for a month and still get billed $300.
All of these options are a non-starter considering basic AC starts from $500. Why should anyone invest more than that?
A national-scale project can likely package cooling for these shafts, possibly emanating from rooftop units.
There is also the issue of upgrading the shared infrastructure. Because of the size it's a lot more expensive to replace, so that is postponed for much longer because now everybody needs to pitch in.
You can install one on the balcony below the railing level.
The housing company is responsible for the exterior surfaces and thus also responsible for whatever happens to fall on bystanders when it will inevitably happen.
AC installers are also notoriously bad at following placement guidelines.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't have A/C but rather all flats use one system with a large roof condenser, or where that is not possible district cooling or ground source.
The problem is if you can't get the home cooled off, then heat that does build up can't escape.
In western Canada until recently we got away with very good insulation coupled with opening windows at night as daytime-vs-nighttime temperatures could swing as much as 15C.
But as both daytime and nighttime temperatures increase, or in more humid climates where the temperature doesn't drop enough, that's no longer effective.
The net result is the home just gets hot and stays hot.
In medieval times, not after, I hope.
if you don't want permanent installation there are not basically mobile split units like Midea Portasplit, it's basically same thing you would install on the wall, but mobile on the wheels (personally I have regular AC (Toshiba) and my multisplit unit is on the flat roof invisible from the street, this year neighbor floor below me installed his unit on the roof as well, we are the only 2 apartments in two units with 40 apartments in total with AC, so much for Prague AC statistics, though honestly even under the roof in 35C+ temperatures it was not that bad prior turning on the AC)
But I have to say, AC is not "banned" anywhere in Europe, apart from certain cantons of Switzerland. In Germany you have a right to AC actually, if your community votes to "veto" the installation a court can overturn that.
Exactly, the whole premise of the article is a bit of a strawman. In fact, where I live, the demand for AC installation is so high that you have to wait months for a company to install a unit for you.
These extreme heat waves are a fairly new phenomenon, summers in central Europe just didn't use to get so hot for such a long stretch of time even a few decades ago. Now that they've become the way they are, people are doing what? Correct, installing AC units. Imagine that.
But let's not forget that energy is also on average a lot more expensive in Europe than in the US. The cost plus environmental concerns, which seem to fair less high in the public conscience on the other side of the Atlantic, have also been reasons why people were not keen on AC units in the past.
The price of energy in Europe is largely determined by taxes and policy costs. Gas is mostly unencumbered. Electricity could be as well. It's a political choice to make electricity expensive.
Furthermore, given that many Europeans couldn't care less about the negative externalities of gas heating, it's very hard to argue that this is a major concern for AC, especially when AC is already mainstream in cars.
And regarding ACs in cars: you will certainly agree that cooling the inside of a car for the duration of a drive vs. the inside of a whole house (or even just selected rooms) for the whole day differ from each other by orders of magnitude regarding the energy required.
In England, if you own a house, you generally have permitted development rights to install one, subject to some fairly common-sense rules. If you live in a flat, though, it’s a very different story: you will need planning permission *as well as* freeholder consent, and the process generally involves engineering/structural/architect drawings and freehold-consent paperwork. The freeholder can also charge you their legal and administration costs, even if they ultimately reject the application. Essentially it's >5K of paperwork which might be wasted if it's rejected even just to install a single 5KW split.
So in the hottest parts of London and other major cities, where a large proportion of people live in flats, installing AC can be very difficult in practice. In the cooler commuter towns, where houses are much more common, it’s considerably easier.
Why can't they build it into new flat blocks/houses? Nothing outright prevents it but everyone does their best to discourage it. The London Plan, for example, uses a “cooling hierarchy” which 'seeks to reduce any potential overheating and also the need to cool a building through active cooling measures' so good luck getting planning for it.
You mean "In England".
We're up to more than 15,000: https://www.rki.de/DE/Themen/Gesundheit-und-Gesellschaft/Ges...
People are seemingly unaware that heat pumps are just an AC with a tiny additional valve in the pipes :) .
In a traditional AC unit, heat is produced by either electric strips or by a gas burner, no refrigeration circuit is involved in the heating cycle. So, just a blower motor runs, compressor (and condenser fan) never runs in the heating cycle.
In heat pumps, refrigeration circuit does both heating and cooling. So, compressor works in both cycles.
One can install an efficient AC unit with electric strips (gas burner) with "efficient ECM motor (for air blower) + VFD compressor (single phase to DC to three phase AC with variable frequency) + modern controls to manage both inside and outside motors." That's where modern AC units are driving at.
Heat pump uses electricity for compressor fan and fan in that outdoor unit. In an efficient conventional AC unit, one trades the extra electricity used in the outside unit for the electricity used for heat strips.
Geothermal heat pump is efficient and is a different ball game.
A heatpump is more energy efficient than most other forms of heating. A heatpump is not always the most efficient way to cool a house.
Both are active temperature control, and both are much more efficient than previous forms of heating and cooling.
There's also the fact that cooling uses much less energy than heating because the temperature differential is usually much less extreme. It takes less energy to go from 100F/37C > 75F/23C than it does to go from 32F/0C > 65F/18C.
I'm not saying people are always right when considering cooling a luxury while considering heating a necessity, but there is a historical reason for that mindset.
I think building design/thermal mass and population density/location has changed quite a bit over the centuries.
The resistence to cooling with AC comes from way before HP became popular and remains, somehow. Part of it is because it's perceived as a luxury (while heating is not), partly because being relatively uncommon until recently its surprising for some people and therefore the perceived cause of illnesses and malaise.
It'll go away. Because it's really vitally important, and because air/air HPs are perfect trojan horses to normalize AC cooling.
.. That being said, I had to call 3 companies in Germany before I even found one willing to sell me a air/air HP. And the cooling function has to be carefully ignored if you want it subsidized.
I sincerely hope so. But the trouble is that politicians and activists are very fond of picking smaller targets for their negativity. Because it is easier to wage war on a regular mid to poor salary-man neighbor instead of some faceless corporation with the billions of cash, a staff of lawyers and incorporated half the world away in a jurisdiction with thoroughly corrupted judges. This is why we are seeing this avalanche of anti-social initiatives under the slogans of "progress". Like the insane fines for not following insane garbage sorting rules in some select countries, or the taxation levied on the individuals and small businesses instead of megacorps, or the whole legalized surveillance while rich people and corpos are excluded, or this AC insanity now (had any activist in EU protested under any business center that it should be without AC? Nope. But firing at individuals is easier and grants more satisfying results.
They don't compromise - even when a compromise would strictly improve the world. Well, most voters hate to make compromises but the greenies seem to do it harder. In NZ we have a very left wing Green Party who in theory could have power in a minority coalition with our "conservative" party. However politically it would never work. I think both parties veto working together, but New Zealand loses out on green progress because of that. Instead the Greens only make a coalition with the left, which is already quite green focused so the Greens remain rather impotent.
Conservative greeny voters in New Zealand need better representation.
Fortunately our heat pumps usually also have AC. I can only guess we don't have any insane rules about that because having a heatpump with AC has been normal for decades (AC isn't just for the hated tall-poppy wealthy: and very few have a dedicated aircon unit).
This 100%. This what I recently articulated for myself about my dissatisfaction with certain groups of people who claim to be very progressive and so on. Some of those people are so radical that they are unwilling to compromise even on a tiny things. If they get to get 100% of something and other people get to get 50% of they want, or if they would compromise and both sets would get 90% or 95% or even sometimes 99% (both), they are absolutely unwilling to cease demanding strict 100%.
Basically they claim to be pro-social, but if we think about the issue in general, they are the ones failing the prisoner's dilemma, just on the opposite side. Not willing to compromise on anything even if they do then humanity on average would win more.
If having a high temperature delta was a concern everyone in Texas would be dead by now.
I set my thermostat to 65F in August. My house is at 67F right now and it's 81F outside (at 7AM). We're still catching up from yesterday. I don't see the point in allowing the condensing unit to shut off when it's this hot and humid out. You are just giving the angry super Mario sun a head start when you let it turn off in the morning. The temperature in my house will still rise to 74-75F with this unit running non stop. The forecast for today is approximately 100F.
At some point, the cost of electricity becomes constant (100% duty cycle). You can't run the air conditioner more than all the time. It makes the equipment last a lot longer when it's not being cycled every 10-15 minutes. It can be cheaper to just keep things brutally cold given the relatively affordable electric rates. $300 capacitor replacement can buy a lot of kilowatt hours in the ercot and entergy markets. Short cycling a compressor with high pressure and you could be replacing one every other year.
If any of this sounds offensive, I would invite the offended party to join me for lunch in downtown Houston or Galveston sometime this week.
Ouch, that's far too cold for me in the UK. I have the house at 20C during the day (68F), and only drop to 18C (64F) at night.
When I had poor insulation that meant heating was regularly on 8 months a year, although it's on less now I live in a well insulated house.
I went to my car, turned on the AC, and drank some water. My heart rate went back to normal, but it was pretty unnerving.
The scarier thing was this was a youth sports tournament. These kids are playing all-day tournaments in 33C+ heat (and sometimes 36C+) for a solid two months of the year. While they may cope with the heat better than I do, I worry it’s only a matter of time before tragedy strikes.
That being said, this year I am making an effort to rely less on AC and do some moderate exercise in the heat to increase my tolerance.
Europe north of France is substantially cooler than much of the US, even on the hottest days. Many homes could get by on ceiling fans, but they are very uncommon here.
I'd still favour the fan, I've lived in India for longer periods with consistently around 32-36 C and a fan is perfectly enough after a little while of adapting.
Charge the battery from the solar and it powers the AC in the evening.
You'll generate more than enough during the day to run AC and fill the battery to run it overnight.
Still using grid sources in winter, but you aren't using the AC. Although you might find air-air AC in heat mode is better than your gas boiler.
You can replace farmland, but that seems like a really bad idea with Globalism's decline. Who knows what's going to happen to the food supply chain over the next 30 years. The only other option is attaching them to the exterior of historic buildings, and heaven forbid! Think about the character of the neighborhood!
In the UK Semi, Terrace and Detached is about 75% of households and 80% of people.
If you look only at owners it's about 90% of households (and even higher for population)
And anyone who owns a home is rich. If you can afford 300k for a house you can afford 15k on reducing your electric bill.
Now rental of course is a separate matter, and the real problem.
As housing is so constrained landlords can extract all the money from tenants regardless of the quality, but even if it isn't, renters tend not to value things like solar or aircon. You can spend £10k adding solar to a house, but you probably aren't going to get enough from extra rent to offset the cost of installing it.
In the US a property owner has to provide AC because renters will expect it, same as you have to provide a washing machine connection in a rented place. This is a mindset thing which can't be changed.
In other European countries, but its not changing. Among owner-occupiers its France 80% houses, Germany and Austria 70%.
However the rental issue is far more in those countries, where nearly half the country live in rental. Things like balcony solar work well there, and they can power a portable AC.
That said, if you are able to get a ground source heat pump, that's awesome, but it's something like 10x to 20x the price of even a really good ceiling fan.
Ground source is overhyped and overpriced. District heating and air-exchange AC is still the winning solution.
try opening your window in +15C high humidity and then sleep.
I assure you, sleeping in a 0-5C sleeping bag on the nearby sea shore would be a more acceptable experience.
You just never lived there, yes?
But if you mean no forced convection, that's just not the case. You can survive at wetbulb temperatures in excess of 30 C, which means 30 C + 100% RH. Hell, my house right now is at about 25 C drybulb and 18 C wetbulb, which from the perspective of evaporative heat transfer is identical to 18 C with 100% RH, so I should be dying any minute. See you on the other side!
but I would not want to live in that bath house.
Tell me you're German without telling me you're German
Most Germans don't own ceiling fans, which is the problem.
Ceiling fans should be installed before any AC.
If you are not convinced, there is a one-hour video by Technology Connections on YouTube that will argue the point more in-depth that anything I could write here.
We've had a series of heat waves this summer, and temperatures have gotten very high inside. Much depends on the location of course, and the type of building, and stuff like that, but the fact is that in Belgium alone thousands of people have died because of the heat. Thousands of people that would still be with us if they would have had adequate cooling.
When it's close to 40 °C in your home, a ceiling fan is not going to make a meaningful difference.
And we need to keep in mind that summers are in all likelihood going to get hotter and hotter.
There were many excess deaths, but there was also a shortage of fans here. Good fans could have also saved their lives.
IR blocking film/tint on outside works great if you can't get windows shaded.
The lower floor has windows facing north so it's always much cooler there. I've never seen it reach more than 30C, which was in the middle of a heatwave, usually it keeps 25C during summer.
Yeah this is exactly my point. If your house is so poorly insulated that your internal temperatures go above the ambient temperature, you can open a window.
There's a world of difference between a house in the countryside, with maybe even some trees providing shade, and an apartment in a densely populated area with very low opportunities for thermal control.
Hottest the hottest south facing room in my house got in the UK this year was 31.8C on the 13th August.
The loft got upto 43C, but that's what insulation is for.
That said, you're right, things are changing. I'm looking at getting AC installed this winter (no way I was paying summer prices).
> Use electric fans only when temperatures are below 40˚C / 104˚F. In temperatures above 40˚C / 104˚F, fans will heat the body.
- https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-cha...
I don't know how bad the situation in Europe is, but we're already at point where there are times and places on Earth where one can construct a primal instinctive understanding of that by simply walking out of an air conditioned room(to which you SHOULD return within half an hour and MUST within an hour). "Just get fans bro" is tone deaf.
Yeah there are those places, and northern Europe is not one of them!
The WHO guide others are posting says fans only work under 40C, but that's the absolute maximum. There's no other option than resorting to devices based on refrigeration cycle when people are already dying("estimated through excess mortality" or however you dress it up), beyond being useless(human cognitive performance significantly degrade at above 28C).
The upper bound of 40C quoted in other comments is also just absolute maximum temperature - it's just saying that there's no way fans do anything if temperature of air and body are actually equal. The practical upper bound is lower than that(humidity and metabolism dependent, I guess).
In any case where I live fans are not a meaningfull stopgap measure.
personally I tried one summer back here in Europe without AC just with ceiling fans in each room and gave up and installed AC next year, that was like 10 years ago, can't imagine just ceiling fans in these 35-40C heatwaves, you will be just moving hot air since building can't cool down even in night
This is not unique to ACs. Anything on the outside of a building requires your co-owners to agree.
People who don't have a balcony are screwed and are entirely dependent on homeowners association which arbitrarily can agree or not, or they can stay indecisive about it and not let you do anything.
Well, if you have a balcony? you just put it there and make the necessary holes for it, problem solved.
The effect is exactly the same - you just have AC installed. In one case you have to go through totally unnecessary hoops, and in other case, you just do whatever you want.
What's even the point of it?
edit: I guess you could route the drain pipe anywhere if you wanted, so I retract my previous statement.
There are also systems that spray the water back at the AC unit to cool it down, this is supposed to both improve efficiency and evaporate the water so you don't have to deal with it. I am sure those have some downsides, too.
And with spraying it on ac you want complete evaporation or you are back to same problem.
As said it is not too hard problem but still something that most likely requires consideration.
Sure thing, you could go to court if they have any problem, but who is going to fight for AC worth $500 for a few years just to get it installed?
Best would probably be to use the existing rainwater pipes that lead down to the sewers - all building have those. But good luck getting that past your HOA-equivalent, as that will most probably involve some modifications to the building and we can't have that, no!
HOAs don't make neighbors co-owners of your own property, do they?
Anyway HOA is something that shouldn't even exist. Or at least not with power to prevent people from having air conditioning in their home.
Not everything is a HOA
They force homeowners to decide together (and pay for) everything from road maintenance to what noise levels are allowed.
Another issue they cause is that, of course, the homeowners living there do not just use HOAs to override the wishes of individuals, but also feel disinclined to let the local authorities ... and the locals ... operate as normal there, given that they pay for everything, sometimes literally including the roads in the area around them. These communities may have banks, parks, even beaches, and there are conflicts about who gets to go there, given the local homeowners pay for maintenance. For example, given they clean up left-behind garbage, do people from the nearby town get to play there ... and leave behind more garbage?
The root of the problem is that more housing is no longer a net positive for many communities in a great many places. The increase in taxation income does not justify the extra infrastructure in many places. This means local authorities refuse building projects unless they pay for their own infrastructure. Hence, HOAs are being forced to take over the functions that public authorities used to have ... because local authorities are forcing the responsibilities that local authorities used to have on them. Of course, then the public nature of public space goes into question.
So a municipality can just refuse to build infrastructure?
That's just the "fuck you, got mine" mentality that permeates the living experience of US citizens. That's how they got their healthcare system as well.
Technically they're refusing to let people build unless they pay for (and arrange for) infrastructure. They will certainly claim that this is in fact building infrastructure.
> That's just the "fuck you, got mine" mentality ...
Of the entire world, yes. Absolutely.
The point of HOAs is to force homeowners to CO-decide (in houses: to make things cheaper for local councils) on what happens to the shared infrastructure. What and how to spend of maintenance and what to change.
Home-owner associations in Europe are frequently set up for apartment buildings, in which case, yes, the roof, foundation, hallways, stairwells, main piping, electricity, etc are all legally co-owned. Primary purpose of HOAs is to save for & plan long-term maintenance on the entire building.
HOAs for neighbourhoods, or blocks with single-family homes or terraced houses are pretty rare in Europe.
https://www.headingtonshark.com/Home/About ("Hello. I'm Magnus Hanson-Heine, the home-owner of the Headington Shark House. The Shark House, formally titled Untitled 1986, consists of a 25ft-long fibreglass and steel shark crashing through the roof of an otherwise ordinary house on a quiet residential street in suburban Oxford...")
The shark scenario is more interesting, and was I'd say was largely allowed to stay because it was an art installation. They couldn't have built an extension of the same proportions without planning permission.
If it was just a matter of red tape it would be fine, but in France people would fight you on AC because it's ugly/noisy/warms up the street.
So you can get it rejected by people who live in a flat where heat is not as much of a problem as your (ground floor vs higher floor, window orientation) or by landlords who don't even live in the building.
It's not ideal during a drought though to be using water like that, it would be nice if we had a grey water tank system so we didn't have to waste drinking water. It doesn't seem possible to install a grey water tank like that in our apartment though. Given our apartment already has district heating, there's not a super strong reason why it couldn't have district cooling as well, but the regulations are not in our favour here.
We installed it all without planning permission, although it still might require permission from the freeholder depending on the rules regarding Service Media alterations (as it requires new plumbing for our mains water).
Technology Connections has a new video exactly about it.
And, we have a flaky electricity, without enough focus or renewables, so, because of war(money)games in the middle east we have a huge gas crisis, and having one/two hours of load-shading every day.
So, tell me, what are we going to do when we can't run the freaking AC, because our power grid failed?
This is encouraging curing the symptoms, not the true problem.
And, the more AC we use, it will increase the ambient temp. And more people uses AC, the more the temp grows. How long we are going to keep doing this? it sounds like another corporate drama to put it on us, the general people instead of solving the issue they create. Heat increased, use AC, it's not a luxury, but we are not going to stop destroying environment.
Places of emergency cooling refuge, parks, backup power to ensure energy/water continue, passive features like solar heating, natural ventilation, bioswales, air quality filtering, cool roofs/roads, water features, overhangs/louvers/awnings, insulation, thermal mass, etc, etc.
These are things grass roots can do now to mitigate impacts while governments dither and punt hard decisions into the future.
Same goes for tree shade and sensible city planning, also architecture (see all those textured dark grey or black condos currently in fashion and shudder). The other day I was biking along a road after dark and residual heat around it is so noticeable, biking 5 meters closer to the trees it felt so much colder.
I've spent some time in SE Asia. Many homes out there don't have an A/C. Apparently the real number is like 85%.
Should air conditioning maybe be less regulated in Europe? Sure. Do I enjoy A/C on occasion? Sure, guilty. Is climate change real? Sure. But A/C is a necessity like water/sewage/electricity? In Europe?? Idk.
Edit: I agree in advance with everyone saying it sucks without AC but just saying, a strategic fan (and opening windows if possible, closing curtains, etc) can be OP. It might sound stupid but for years I literally forgot fans existed because I was where everywhere is AC and often no fan. Just try it...
Edit 2: I think if you're in a hot AND especially humid place (probably not EU) I'm not sure if I'd take AC or dehumidifier
Like they literally put on the sweatshot/hoodie in the early mornings with effing 27 degrees Celsius
That’s not a normal temperature for Europeans.
Also I could not imagine doing some serious thought work in temps like this.
There are a lot of studies of how mental performance is correlated with temperatures with men needing couple degrees even lower than women (eg 22 vs 24)
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Airflow helps a lot, of course. But it must be in swinging motions / constantly changing direction — nervous system doesn’t like same constant stimulus to the point of neuralgia if prolonged.
Dehumidifier mode in AC works by cooling the air below the dew point, removing the condensation, then warming the air up (either by itself or literally heating it up)
The real problem is the repair costs of these advanced units in the developed countries. Carrier wanted $8k for a new control board for a residential unit in the US. Same thing for ECM/VFD.
Same water tray and a hose for water condensate.
Due point for that air is 19.8C. Meaning it reaches 100% relative humidity at this point. If cooled even more, water condensates from air into droplets.
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What this means: if you cool that air to 22 degrees (instead of 19.8) it will reach 87% humidity without loosing any water to the outside.
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That’s why we need humidifiers in winter as the opposite thing happens: if we heat cold air that has 80% relative humidity to room temperature it will drop its humidity to 20%
That’s a bit too nitpick-y. It raises the relative humidity by the condenser coil unit so it condenses and drips out, but air flowing back into the rooms will have less humidity.
Even if I somehow manage to pull the air in, the moment I close it - the walls that have all that heat will start giving it back again, bringing the temperature back to where it was.
It's so funny, that when the winter starts, it's long into the winter before I have to turn on heating in my apartment.
I was in Vienna this summer and the inside of the apartment was over 40 for the entire week. Thank god, we were able to buy a portable AC unit from Mediamrkt before they ran out.
No, it's about combination of humidity and temperature called wet bulb.
Highest wet bulb we can manage is 35 degrees. Below 35 wet bulb, a fan helps. And that's my point. For comparison the most extreme wet bulb temp that hit London in summer 2026 was 26 degrees according to met office. (I can't find other peak 2026 wet bulb temps in Europe)
Dehumidifier works pretty well, provided it's built in to the AC unit, portable one's will increase the room temp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_QfX0SYCE8
Portable one's heat dispenser is inside your room, AC unit's outside. But the issue being, as it disperses the heat outside, it's probably still increasing the ambient heat?
s/Europe/all parts of Europe/
I.e., Europe has a lot of different climate (sub)zones, and it heavily depends on where you actually live.
I'm fine with a fan in the Alps, where I sleep at 1,000 metres above sea level, and nights with the minimum temperature above 20°C are still very rare. I even don't bother turning the fan on most of the time, or just for an hour or so to clear the trapped heat in the bedroom at like 22:00 o'clock once outside cooled down enough.
OTOH I'm NOT fine in my Vienna flat with just a fan. There, this summer we got quite a few nights where the minimum temperature did not go below 25°C, even some with a minimum of 28°C and a maximum of 41°C. The flat is an old building and has only windows on one side facing a small curtilage without any trees or grass, so it traps heat, and I cannot even cool it well at night, even if the outside temperature goes a few degrees below the inside one, as the yard also traps heat.
Without an AC I could not sleep at all-even with a fan, it's very hard to sleep well above 25°, and frankly even above 23° for me. And I had to buy a much less efficient portable one (before the Midea Portasplit was a thing) because of braindead local regulations.
Ironically, in the winter the local gov suddenly starts calling those "bad ACs" again by their alternative "heat pumps" name, and they become the best thing ever for heating. I really cannot figure out how one can do that mental gymnastics without getting a headache.
Anyway, don't assume that your local conditions hold for all of Europe.
The standard here are heat pumps, at least for residential housing. It is really only a problem if you live in blocks or apartment buildings that are housing associations, with strict rules regarding how such heat pumps should be installed.
With that said, for my travel to Europe - especially down south, AC in the hotel room is an absolute necessity. A couple of years ago we ended up in a completely booked hotel in Italy (mid July), where the AC in our room was busted - it was beyond miserable. Ended up changing hotels after one night.
Since when should there be AC in friggin' Norway?
But during summer months, where some cities can hit 30+ degrees (C), that could become uncomfortable. Even worse if you're somewhere humid...20 degrees in high humidity can make you toss and turn all night.
Unfortunately, I do live in a "heritage" building so split unit is a no-no. Midea pre-filled mini-splits went from €700 to 2000-3000+ and months of lead time. It's crazy.
They're back to normal prices now. At least in Germany. Make sure to grab one before the next Summer hits :)
We equipped our founding era building with wall heating and will test out the heatpump based cooling next summer, if it's not enough I would consider installing a small AC unit, that's super easy as well.
Don't know what the article wants to say, there's no ban on AC anywhere in Europe and small units are quite affordable, you can get a single split unit from Mitsubishi for 500 € from Italy. The only nuisance is that installation is heavily regulated in Germany so they rip you off with insane cost. That's definitely a thing that needs to change in my opinion.
They think global warming is a minor threat that requires minimal to no changes in regulations, but heat waves (that, according to her, have always been the same every year) are a massive threat to the public and requires immediate changes in regulation.
How would you feel if your neighbour started doing something that was good for them but disastrous for you? Or something with good intentions that turned out to just be a huge mistake causing billions in damages, maybe even lives lost?
Weather engineering is extremely risky, we can barely predict the weather a few hours in advance. We have no idea what kind of havoc we might cause trying to do it on a large scale.
Domestic connections in the UK are built with an average peak consumption of about 1.5 to 2kW, you can draw ten times that, but its unlikely every house will do that at the same time, so it's just like a contention ratio on a network.
Now imagine everyone charges their car, even if it's only for an hour, but when they get home at 7pm, same time as putting on the kettle and the oven, that's way higher than the substation can provide.
One study put a fully electric car/heatpump/cooking about 4 times the peak demand of an ice/gas heating house, even if total usage is only twice as much, and total energy use is far less than with ICE/gas. Throw in solar and it reduces the total power drawn from the grid, but not the peak amount. Drawing 20kW for one hour is far more expensive to service than drawing 1kW for 24 hours, but uses less energy.
> Drawing 20kW for one hour
Why would you fast charge if your car is going to be parked at home overnight anyway
20kW is the about the maximum input to a typical UK home (80A or 100A breaker single phase 216-253V). You can draw that fairly easily.
But a street of 100 houses is not drawing 20kW to each house at the same time, or 2MW to the street. Standard models put it around 200kW. The substation can be overspecced to 300kW and there's no problem.
Convert everyone to electric and that substation needs to be upped far higher.
I live on a new build site still under construction. Until a month ago the site was fed from a long cable from a separate substation. The houses have solar and electric car points.
The voltage varied dramatically and electric chargers would frequently trip (they do that when voltage goes over I think 247V for safety purposes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f6TD2OSup4 helped me understand what I was seeing.
Last month we were moved onto a new substation and haven't have issues since.
> that electricity has to be made from using coal gas or other stuff, renewables are not a big share in most of them
If we're talking about Europe as this thread was, fossil fuels are 35% of the grid and dwindling (it was over 50% 20 years ago). Coal is only 11%.
> Those cables transferring electricity loses a lot of energy and gives off lots of heat but you won't see that
Transmission losses are 5%. Transporting oil (be it by ship, truck or pipeline) isn't free either.
Basically an automotive air conditioning unit hooked up to a battery and solar panel, with a tanning bed type form factor (up to maybe capsule hotel size), painted or coated to reflect light & heat. Highly portable.
I'm not sure if it's remotely practical, but it would be interesting to run the numbers, and I'm certain there is at least someone out there who would buy it even if the cost turned out to be higher than I envision.
What some people in the UK do is go to local air conditioned public buildings like libraries (which they are welcome to do) and occasionally a large air conditioned store or shopping centre.
As I feared, though, with a price tag of $10k USD, you're halfway to buying a solid used car (preferably hybrid) with air conditioning... which could sleep at least two people fully reclined, plus kids or pets. So you might as well do that. I'd love to see a viable path to bringing this price down.
Regardless, there do seem to at least be niche applications even at this price point.
The story gets worse when you put heat pump to the same system - now you have to run it to its limits to have just enough heat in the water to make the radiators release enough heat to barely heat up the room.
Of course, it's only that simple to replace one heat source with another, why wouldn't anyone do it already?
In most European countries, electricity is taxed much higher than gas. Those taxes eat a large chuck of the efficiency gains from a heat pump, and then it's not worth the effort.
Proof in Belgium : https://www.coolblue.be/en/air-conditioners/filter which ironically enough aren't even available anymore because they are out of stock, so clearly purchased showing people had no problem getting them. Alternative example 12000BTU A+++ energy rating delivery next week https://www.bol.com/be/fr/p/climatiseur-mobile-puissant-clim... To be clear I'm not advocating to buy these, or not, only that they are freely and conveniently available.
You can get a portable split-system if you have a balcony.
But installing a real full-size AC with a large external unit is prohibited in most cases. If you’re renting you’re of course out of luck. An apartment, even one you own-forget it.
FWIW houses in Tuscany with very strict rules, e.g. you don't even get to pick the color of your own house, manage to get the entire place setup with full-size AC it's feasible. What's not feasible is trying to ignore laws on what a building must look like but that has nothing to do with air conditioning. For example if Belgium if you has is classified as notable (most old houses are) then you need a permit even for the window frame.
There's a lot of buildings to tear down and convert if you want to legitimately make comparisons.
On the bright side, I suppose one mitigating factor is that renewable energy makes it less harmful to use energy to power A/C usage.
I guess there's the unintended consequence of making the healthcare costs cheaper, if you let the older people cook under unusual weather patterns (even if they are unusual every summer now).
What's particularly weird, but also very French, is it's now a Right v Left issue, with the Left saying we should explore building design ideas for passive cooling instead of hurting the environment further (after all suffering is our own fault for hurting the environment and we should be exposed to that consequence), while the Right is pushing for AC.
Whatever it is, if you go to Paris make sure you stay in a hotel or an Airbnb with A/C.
I can't take the article seriously after that.
I also have reservations about why an American libertarian think tank writes about what Europeans should do, but that's probably on me.
My thoughts exactly, except in my mind it's pretty clear that it's about influencing the climate change discourse... The less people are bothered by the rising temperatures, the more they will acquiesce to environmentally unfriendly policy.
Good luck with that.
Conveniently, cooling is especially needed when the energy production from solar is at its maximum.
I've been part of projects building 20-40 MW solar installations in southern germany and on average we throw away >50% of what we generate.
There is SO MUCH SOLAR now, we don't know what to do with all the energy.
If a 10-day heat wave cuts work productivity by 10% (which is optimistic IMO, it's probably worse in countries where people aren't used to it), that's equivalent to a 1-day general strike. If the workers actually managed to pull off a general strike in modern times, you can be sure the state wouldn't be happy with business as usual.
Europe had tens of thousands of excess deaths from heatwaves this year. It's not about american think tank but basic will to avoid suffering
Pretty much all you need to know in 2026.
Its funny how its mostly US-based libertarian types concerned about AC in Europe. There are plenty of things Europe over-regulates, but this is not it.
But hey, at least we preserved the nice 19th century Parisian landscape.
Leaving aside that this kind of insinuation makes the article look like cheap rage-bate, cold shock is a cardiovascular risk to the same populations that are most vulnerable to heat waves, and the French government article was recommendations to implement AC in a reasonable way to keep them safe. The underlying weirdness here is that neither of them is a problem for most of the population: the vast majority of heat-wave deaths aren't otherwise healthy people. If you're going to write an article advocating AC, predicated on the deaths heat causes, you should at least mention that you're worried about a very specific population.
For sure heat is uncomfortable for everyone. But so is cold shock: don't drop the temperature by 15°C so that I have to wear a coat to work in the middle of summer. That's just silly.
[1]: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/LEGITEXT000006051990/...
I don't have AC at home. Some think I don't install it because I somehow don't get hot in summer or cold at winter. It's the other way around. We, people, have one of the best thermoregulation systems among animals, our whole skin is essentially a huge cooling system. The only way to render it incapable is... stop using it for a prolonged amount of time. It's use it or lose it all over again.
If you don't believe me, read what ultra-marathon runners have to say. If a trained athlete can survive Badwater, almost everyone can train themselves to survive a European heatwave.
Sure, some people can't. Some need AC because of cardiovascular conditions. It's fine, let them have it. But some people can't walk because of musculoskeletal conditions, but no one would argue that a wheelchair is a necessity.
Even if it got a bit hot – like it does in mine, that has less volumetric heat capacity — simple floor scrub lowers temperature. Evaporating water is just a very good at that, and floor is a big area.
If we take a house made of paper and place it in a place with no trees and a lot of asphalt, I believe that AC could become a necessity. No amount of evaporating water could help you to fight heat rising from the road.
But I much prefer better houses and city planning
My house has 65 cm / 2 ft stone walls, which makes the normal temperature changes throughout the year very gradual because of the enormous thermal mass of the walls. But once the walls heat up during a prolonged heatwave (which are becoming more frequent because of climate change), AC becomes remarkably ineffective at cooling because the walls will continue radiating heat into the rooms. The walls used to cool down during the night and provide a very nice thermal buffer during the day, but with elevated temperatures even at night, that doesn't work anymore.
"Just install AC, brooo" seems like something coming from the crowd that doesn't want to address the root problem.
Yes, AC is harder in old building with solid walls as is common in UK & Europe. We have a portable AC unit since March this year, and are very glad of it. It doesn't solve everything but it helped us through the worst of the heat.
All of that is nuance, and nuance is notoriously ineffective when replying to propaganda that relies on black and white thinking, volume and on changing the subject to something related, emotive but not as consequential.
You are reading propaganda.
> The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. [2]
It's nothing more than US libertarian think tank trying to influence EU policy... Perhaps in an effort to push more anti climate change agenda/discourse in US (but that might be just my projection).
Thank you, case closed.
[1] https://humanprogress.org/about/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute
edit: (well the author decided to remove part of his comment mentioning "face-condoms", too bad)
>the RKI estimated roughly 2,600–4,900 heat-related deaths annually in 2022–2025
>Germany reported about 2,800 COVID-19-associated deaths in the 2024/25 season, which covers most of the 2025 winter and spring.
so yes, taking Germany as the example, the world-ending plague now kills fewer boomers per year than summer does, despite it being over 4 years since anyone wore face condoms or gave a shit about bi-weekly boosters.
so I don't think it's fair to scold Hans from Hamburg over his carbon footprint. Abdul from Mogadishu may emit less CO2 over his own lifetime, but each of his 5 children will have 5 children, and no one will scold him for it.
(I would use something other than "Abdul from Mogadishu" as the counterpart, but the only remotely European people not going extinct are some subgroups of Israeli Jews.)
What?
Race is not something I care about, and cultures come and go.
The groups we were 10,000 years ago are not the groups we have now, which are not what the groups will be 10,000 years from now.
Big whoop.
The ability to create new accounts so easily and be a nuisance is my least favourite "feature" of HN.
psycho stalkers who will go through your whole comment history to construct an ad hominem are half the reason why people use throwaways, btw ;)
AC giving people headaches and destroying their sinuses sounds a bit bonkers. Ok let people install it then, slap a “government believes this may give you headaches and destroy your sinuses” sticker on it and let people decide.
I guess before the heat wave this could have a been a litmus test for stupidity but now it should be a litmus test for maliciousness.
> HumanProgress.org is a project of the Cato Institute
Oh ffs.
Nothing unique about Germans in this case, sorry. ;)
So once it is too hot, just turn the AC on and you won't get sick or risk a heat stroke either.
We'll come back to this in several months for a winter freeze to see if Europe has basic heating to keep themselves warm (or will they not turn the heaters on for some reason) and in a year, to see if the rest of Europe have learned their lesson to just have basic AC installed for the next heatwave.
Personally I think their "allergy" is just because most AC units in Japan are disgustingly moldy and never cleaned regularly.
>Yet as heat waves kill tens of thousands of Europeans each year
...Each year? Was it the case every year twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago? What has changed, miss Follett?
Last words from the article:
>But forgoing air conditioning is a refusal to move on from a lethally hot past.
Gee, I wonder if this global warming thing wasn't a mistake to let happen...
If that author is right, then we can and should punish the people responsible for global warming? Because that includes a lot of her colleagues at Cato and WaPo. The same who were against the same carbon taxes that would be useful to reduce and mitigate the global warming that kills...
So every adult human and corporation?
Are you considering answering this question? Was it the case fifty years ago? Did anything change?
And if you don't already know it, just wonder why AC isn't widespread in Europe, why nuclear plants built decades ago have to stop due to the lack of water and why every single article talks about an "exceptional" heat wave. Do you really need me to hold you hand there?