The coming summer has been one of the hottest in recent years in many areas of our hemisphere. Temperatures remained above average for many days, with days that were hot and muggy, annoying for some and dangerous to the health of others. Those who could have used air conditioners to escape the heat: in France alone, explains the Economist in a long article, 192 percent more air conditioners were sold in the first three weeks of July than in the same period last year. In Japan, where historic high temperatures have been reached, the government has initiated a plan to assist schools in installing air conditioners, while in Texas a court order required the governor to have cooling systems installed in prisons. .
Air conditioners and refrigerators can improve the lives of millions of people, but their benefits have a huge cost, especially in environmental terms, a topic at the center of the debate on energy policies for the coming decades.
One billion new air conditioners
The International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental organization that promotes the coordination of energy policies, estimates that in the next ten years a billion new air conditioners will be installed around the world, increasing the global number by about two thirds compared to the current one (1.6 billion). Including other cooling systems – such as refrigerators to store food and medicines, or to keep data center temperatures low – should lead to the installation of 6 billion new devices in about a decade.
New installations have not stopped in recent years, especially in countries where air conditioning was not widespread until now. In China, few homes were equipped with air conditioning 20 years ago, now it is estimated that the country alone owns 35 percent of all air conditioners in the world, well above 23 percent in the United States, where cooling of environments is extremely popular.
Trends comparable to those of China in the 1990s are beginning to be seen in India and Indonesia, where it is expected that in a few years tens of millions of people will be able to buy their first air conditioner. In Saudi Arabia, the construction of skyscrapers and buildings equipped with air conditioning has made new areas habitable, to the point that by 2030 the country could use more energy for air conditioning than that produced by the oil it exports around the world.
Currently, only 8 percent of the roughly 3 billion people living in the tropics have access to air conditioning, a very low percentage compared to 90 percent in the United States and Japan. The process of progressive urbanization in the tropics will change things rapidly, along with several other factors, including an aging population, which necessitates the use of air conditioning to protect older and at risk people from the heat. The same urban changes will contribute to the increase in demand: large buildings, such as skyscrapers and shopping centers, need air conditioners to be cooled.
The benefits of air conditioning
Air conditioning is often at the center of strong criticism, and not only when it is used by reproducing polar temperatures in the rooms. Yet, recalls the Economist, numerous scientific researches have shown that, when used responsibly, air conditioners are a resource for health (both physical and mental) and for the economy. A study conducted at the Australian National University found that many people in Southeast Asia are unable to work 15-20 percent of their shifts due to the heat. Another research has calculated that in Central America, GDP (gross domestic product) falls by 1 percent for every degree above 26 ° C. A study, conducted in the United States, also found that students' cognitive abilities in dormitories without air conditioning are significantly reduced, compared to those who live in dorms equipped with air conditioners.
The very hot summer of 2003 caused between 11,000 and 17,000 more deaths than the average in France, with cardiovascular complications among the main causes. Following that experience, the French government approved a series of measures to encourage the installation of air conditioners in buildings, especially to protect the elderly. This year, the hottest days in France caused temperatures to reach higher than those of 2003, but without there being an anomalous peak in hospitalizations like 15 years ago. Warmer-than-average summers have led to a greater spread of air conditioners also in the rest of Europe, where until a few years ago air conditioning was not seen as an inevitable necessity as in the United States.
Other cooling systems also contribute to people's health and well-being. In developing countries, food and medicines often spoil due to heat and limited storage options. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 600 million people fall ill each year from poorly stored food, with 400,000 deaths attributable to cases of food poisoning. Many medicines, starting with vaccines, are not stored at the right temperatures, with about a quarter of the reserves having to be thrown away because they are no longer safe or effective. Air conditioners, refrigerators and other cooling systems could reduce this waste, which in many cases becomes a cause of death.
Environmental impact
The benefits brought by cooling systems are undeniable, but air conditioners and refrigerators have a great impact on the environment, especially as regards gas emissions greenhouse, which trap solar radiation causing the planet's temperature to rise. Cooling the air requires large amounts of energy: according to the IEA currently in the world all the cooling machines combined absorb 2 thousand terawatt hours per year, resulting in a production of 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), 12 percent about all that released into the atmosphere annually. At this rate, and without significant improvements in the efficiency of air conditioners, the consumption of air conditioners and refrigerators is likely to be around 6,000 terawatt hours in 2050.
Energy consumption throughout the day is not constant: it peaks at certain particular times, in the case of air conditioners during the hottest hours of the day or when millions of people return to their homes in the evening after having worked. Electricity suppliers need to be able to withstand the peaks, but doing so is very costly because it requires investments in additional structures that are used for a few hours a day and which must quickly produce the required energy. For this reason, support and backup plants are often built to save money, focusing on oil and coal to burn which produce greater quantities of CO2.
Hydrofluorocarbons (alkyl halides) are also used in the circuits of the cooling systems, some to replace chlorofluorocarbons, among those responsible for the so-called ozone hole (the thinning of the gas layer in the atmosphere that protects us from the most harmful solar rays ). Small leaks in the circuits lead to the dispersion of these gases, which hold much more heat than CO2. There are hundreds of millions of outdated refrigerators and air conditioners leaking these gases around the world, with a huge impact on the environment.
There are international agreements to increasingly reduce the use of dangerous gases in air conditioners and refrigerators, but not all countries respect them and there are exceptions for developing economies, which cannot afford the latest generation systems that are safer and expensive. An air conditioner has an average life of around 10 years, so those installed now or by the expiry of the next decade provided for by international agreements will continue to be used until 2038. The installation of millions of models of this type in developing countries could delay the transition to more efficient systems with a lower environmental impact.
Increasingly hot summers make it necessary to use more cooling systems, which increase energy consumption and consequently the production of greenhouse gases, which in turn contribute to climate change by increasing temperatures. A greater use of renewable sources to produce energy and more efficient systems to cool buildings, food and medicines could break this vicious circle, but with considerable economic costs and times that are difficult to predict.
