Americans have never shied away from air conditioning. We’ve taken great joy in the technology. It is even part of our recent history. The ability to keep the indoors ever cool has led to the rise of Southwest cities, such as El Paso and Phoenix. Las Vegas would have remained a dot on the map, visited only by dedicated high rollers and hurried honeymooners, without the development of affordable air conditioning.
Nowadays, try to think of walking into any restaurant or store that does not have air conditioning. Here, in San Diego, where the summers are cool, I’ve known folks to turn on the AC once the thermometer hits 70. I was recently in a conference room in which most folks were wearing sweaters, and the person leading the meeting turned the air conditioning way up. We even air condition the outdoors. How often have you seen a business with its doors open while the AC is pumping away? From the torrid deserts and sweltering South to the most northern ends of New England we turn on the AC. In 2020, nearly 90 percent of U.S. homes had air conditioning.
This is yet another difference between Europe and the U.S. While we’re at 90 percent AC, that figure for Europe has stayed around 20 percent, with some countries having a very low rate of cooling the inside air. Percentages for the UK and Germany are as low as five percent and three percent, respectively.
Europeans have traditionally viewed air conditioning as an excess, something Americans, with their big SUVs, big houses, and big everything indulge themselves in.
That difference is now becoming less different. More and more Europeans are putting in window units or installing whole-house air conditioning. While part of the reason is simply advertising and the influence of U.S. culture, the biggest reason is climate change. Global warming is now bringing heat waves in the nineties or even triple digits to England, France, Germany, and the rest of Europe.
Last year, a heat wave hit Scandinavia that prompted health alerts in Finland and Sweden. In the United Kingdom, 2025 was its hottest year on record and last month, the UK recorded its hottest day in May, with London temperatures exceeding 90 degrees on the 25th. The thermometer hit 95 at Kew Gardens in southwest London.
Another heat wave hit Europe at the end of May. Temperature records were broken, with the heat soaring to over 86 degrees throughout France. The heat was likely a major contributing factor in deaths at sporting events. The temperatures hit the upper eighties in Italy as well.
Germans have always eschewed air conditioning. That’s changing. In a span of four years, from 2020 to 2024, German production of air conditioning surged by 75 percent, from 181,000 units to approximately 317,000 units. Imports of air conditioners rose by 50 percent as well. The pandemic may have played a part in this development. People stuck at home may have thought passing the time a little cooler may have made it more bearable. But if it were simply because of COVID, that trend would not be continuing, as it has been.
It’s the same in the UK. As London, Belfast, even Edinburgh now swelter for parts of the summer, more and more people in Britain and Northern Ireland are getting air conditioning. The number of houses with air conditioning has doubled, from two million to four, in the past three years. Demographers and others who follow trends like this say more than just heat is boosting sales of AC units. They say more people are working from home.
Italy actually restricts the use of air conditioning as well as heating. With some exceptions, cooling and heating in public buildings are allowed only during the hottest and coldest times of year, and then only during certain times of day. Further, air conditioning can be set no lower than 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Similar wintertime restrictions keep the heat from being set higher than 70.
The energy intensity of air conditioning has the Swiss viewing it as incompatible with their country’s climate goals. And while Switzerland has no outright bans on air conditioning, folks there sometimes have a few hurdles to pass before installing a unit. In Geneva, possibly the strictest canton, people may have to show a legitimate need, such as a medical condition, before being allowed to install AC.
And the Swiss are on to something. Even though renewables are advancing everywhere, we still use a lot of fossil fuels for our electricity. With Europe and the rest of the world cooling more of their houses, businesses, and schools, by 2050 the emissions from all of our air conditioning could contribute another tenth of a degree of warming. That may not sound like much, but small increases in the overall planetary temperature have great ramifications.
Thoughts? Are there better ways of staying cool besides AC? Have you sweltered through Europe in summer? Please leave a comment by clicking the “Leave a comment” button below.
Previous Green Dispatches about air conditioning and staying cool:
Can We Turn Down the Air Conditioning?
·
April 26, 2021
The climate plan for the county of San Diego, which relied to a great degree on buying carbon offsets instead of actually doing something about the County’s greenhouse gases, was found to be out of compliance with CEQA, California’s environmental quality law.
New research on keeping cities cool
·
November 22, 2024
Cities around the world are responding to the climate crisis by greening up, cooling their avenues with trees and placing public green spaces amid their buildings of steel and concrete.
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