Air conditioners are our best bet in the fight against extreme heat – whether we like it or not — Global AC demand will inevitably accelerate as the world continues to warm amid the climate crisis
The greenest campaigners against climate change have long suffered from a crippling shortcoming: they too often frame the challenge as a problem of excess consumption. This motivates calls to “degrow” the economy and to curb the population. The claim is that humans consume too many resources, which in the context of climate change means too much energy.
Nowhere has the tension between this proposition and reality become more palpable during this sweltering summer than in the conversation over air conditioning.
If the atmosphere were to warm more than 3C above the average temperature in the preindustrial era, a prospect that looks ever more likely given the lackluster efforts to reduce carbon emissions, one in six of the world’s largest cities would suffer at least one heatwave per year lasting more than a month, according to the World Resources Institute. Low-income countries would suffer, on average, 6.9 heatwaves per year. Delhi would suffer at least 140 days with temperatures hitting at least 35C (95F).
Demand for AC around the world will inevitably accelerate as the atmosphere continues to warm. Ninety percent of households in the US and Japan enjoy artificial cooling. But in Indonesia, the share is only 9%. In India, it is 5%. Of the 2.8 billion people living in the hottest parts of the world, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), only 8% currently possess AC. These countries are populous, they are generally poorer and they will get particularly hot as climate change progresses.
The global stock of air conditioners in buildings is expected to mushroom to 5.6bn by 2050, up from 2.5bn today, according to the IEA. In India alone, installed AC inventory will rise from 48m units in 2020 to 1.1bn in 2050, a 23-fold increase. Even if the world met the emissions targets laid out in the 2015 Paris climate accords – which is not going to happen – an average of 40% to 50% of the population in many of the world’s warmest countries would still require AC.
This is going to require a lot of energy. Scientists at Harvard’s School of Engineering and applied sciences estimated that in India and Indonesia, demand for power just for cooling in 2050 could be as high as 75% of their current total annual electricity demand.
This poses a challenge for the climate. In 2022, energy for cooling, mostly for residential and nonresidential space cooling but also to maintain cold chains for food and pharmaceutical production, and to cool transport, accounted for roughly 2.5bn tons of CO2 equivalent emissions, according to a United Nations report, about 7% of total emissions. In the absence of further strategies to improve energy efficiency and improve passive cooling techniques, it would rise to nearly 8bn tons by 2050.
So what does one do? Apparently, 58% of the French would rather “suffer from the heat than install an air conditioner in order to protect the environment”. But these sentiments cannot drive the world’s response to a warming world. To fight the battle against climate change requires, in fact, facilitating access to AC for billions of people who are now at risk of facing a hotter planet without the technology to protect themselves and their economies.
This proposition doesn’t rest only on arguments from ethics – although there are plenty of those. For starters, there is substantial evidence that air conditioning reduces heat’s impact on health. One study of US data found that the lethality of days hotter than 80F (27C) declined by about 75% from 1900 to 2004, almost entirely due to the adoption of residential air conditioning. Asking countries not to deploy AC is tantamount to accepting higher mortality.
Another powerful reason is that limiting access to air conditioning will set back economic growth. There is abundant evidence that excessive heat in the workplace reduces labor productivity and that air conditioning mitigates the decline. Heat can also stymie student achievement, eroding human capital.
Those living in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia or other unbearably hot places wherever will not heed the call to resist AC. Demanding unrealistic policies that are detrimental to their development is a straightforward strategy to ensure these countries do not cooperate with the effort to slow climate change. Campaigns from the west to stop hydropower in Africa, (even as westerners also called to stop developing fossil fuels on the continent) delivered little and engendered ill will. Trying to limit their access to AC would do the same.
Whether it is to power industries, improve transportation, or cool homes and workplaces, achieving faster economic growth will require poor hot countries around the world to consume more energy. Their economic development is indispensable for the global battle against climate change.
Just as fans of depopulation must understand that innovation needs people, fans of shrinking humanity’s footprint on the planet to prevent climate change misunderstand how humanity has prospered despite environmental constraints: through innovation. The path to decarbonization requires figuring out how to produce zero-carbon energy on a vast scale everywhere. It will be easier to do this in a rich world with AC and refrigeration than in a poor hot one.