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The unending heat this summer has kept the air conditioners in my apartment windows wildly busy. When I’m not taking guesses about what my electric bill might look like this month, I’ve been thinking a lot about how air-conditioning is the double-edged sword of climate technologies.
On one hand, temperatures are rising around the globe, shattering extreme heat records on basically every continent. That’s making air-conditioning less of a “nice to have” and more of an absolute necessity in some parts of the world.
On the other hand, air-conditioning is becoming a monster when it comes to energy demand. We might have to add a whole US electrical grid’s worth of new energy generation just to power all the air conditioners that will come online in the next few decades.
Cold take
Air-conditioning seems ubiquitous where I live in the US, to the point that I carry around a sweater in the summer in anticipation of over-cooled offices and restaurants.
But in many parts of the world, including some of the countries at highest risk for extreme heat, most people go without it. Roughly 5% of households in India have air-conditioning. Of the 2.8 billion people living in the hottest parts of the world, roughly one in 10 has access to AC, according to the International Energy Agency.
That’s expected to change in the coming decades, as the world’s largest AC manufacturers target growing markets in Asia and Africa. By 2050, over two-thirds of the world could have an air conditioner, and half those units will likely be in three countries, according to the IEA: China, Indonesia, and India.
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James' World 2 
Aug 08, 2023 @ 18:00:57