
Air-conditioners do great good, but at a high environmental cost - lazerpants
https://www.economist.com/international/2018/08/25/air-conditioners-do-great-good-but-at-a-high-environmental-cost
======
legitster
I am very skeptical.

Air conditioning has enabled large amounts of people to move from cold
climates to warm climates (places like Dallas and Hong Kong basically wouldn't
exist like they do without it). And there is a lot more energy spent heating
in the north than there is cooling in the south. So on average, I would assume
there is a _net benefit_ if you consider the tradeoffs.

I think there is a stigma people have that heating is essential for life, but
A/C is optional. But we should really compare them against each other.

~~~
genericone
A/C was considered absolutely critical in making Singapore's economy flourish,
at least according to Singapore's ex prime minister:
[http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2009_fall_2010_winter/16_y...](http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2009_fall_2010_winter/16_yew.html)

 _Lee | Air conditioning. Air conditioning was a most important invention for
us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of
civilization by making development possible in the tropics.

Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or
at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air
conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to
public efficiency._

~~~
Spooky23
Someone should tell that to US government. The first internship that i had in
a (state) government office would do early dismissal when the inside temp was
over 90 degrees for 2 hours. It was a miserable experience.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
I'm 100% certain that this is not the norm. However, there is good precedent
for being more conservative with the AC than most Americans are. In at least
one major European country, that is actually the law: new office buildings
cannot have traditional AC.

~~~
marcoperaza
What justification is offered for reducing people’s quality of life like this?

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
Air conditioning uses large amounts of energy. This use has costs. Using it
less reduces these costs.

~~~
loco5niner
Airbags have cost too. And big, fancy jets.

------
vanderZwan
I have one "problem" with airconditioning: it's a "cure" for cooling down a
building after it heats up too much, but the more cost-effective, sustainable
solution is _prevention_.

If we prioritize battling the urban heat island effect first, the remaining
temperature problems can be tackled at a much lower energy cost with with
airco.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island)

[1] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/03/solar-oriented-
cities...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/03/solar-oriented-cities-1-the-
solar-envelope.html)

[2] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/03/solar-oriented-
cities...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/03/solar-oriented-
cities-2-solar-access-in-19th-century-cities.html)

[3] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/03/solar-oriented-
cities...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/03/solar-oriented-
cities-3-housing-density.html)

~~~
Reason077
Isn't the "urban heat island" effect a fundamental property of the way we've
designed and built our cities?

To fix it, wouldn't we need to redesign buildings to have things like green
roofs and use construction materials that reflect heat. And we'd have to tear
up much of our paving and roads and replace them with trees, water, and green
space. That all sounds nice, and it's a good principle to consider when
designing new urban areas.

But it's extremely expensive and disruptive to go rebuilding existing cities,
and all the construction itself would have an environmental cost. Surely air
conditioning is cheaper?

~~~
hinkley
First thing to do is stop making the problem _worse_.

Last I checked we are still building our cities. Mine is in the process of
knocking down all the one story commercial space and replacing it with six
story mixed use buildings.

~~~
danso
Your proposed alternative is to increase urban sprawl?

~~~
hinkley
What? No. My point is that each new building is a chance to do better.
Claiming it’s too late because we have built up areas is helplessness.

If you double the size of a town and build the new half well you solve more
than half of the problem.

------
jimmaswell
> Without drastic improvements in air-conditioners’ efficiency, the IEA
> reckons, they will be burning up 6,000 TWhs by 2050.

I feel like future improvements in the efficiency and greenness of energy
production have the potential to offset increasing energy demands. We could
solve much of this faster if we'd just properly utilize nuclear, but politics
get in the way of using efficient designs and public perception is unfairly
negative despite it being the safest of all energy production methods[1]. If
electric vehicles gain more traction then the emissions from the transport of
materials for nuclear etc. also stop being a factor.

Side note, I hate this font they use that makes a 1 look like a seriffed I.
Unnecessarily hard to read.

1: [https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-
energy](https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy)

~~~
maltalex
The problem with energy efficiency is that it paradoxically tends to increase
consumption.

There’s a basic economic aspect we mustn’t forget - supply and demand. When
energy prices drop, consumers often buy more if it.

I’m on mobile so I don’t have a link at hand, but I recall reading that people
drove a lot less when gas prices were higher. When they went back down, people
went back to driving more.

If you really want to lower energy consumption- just raise the price.

~~~
jimmaswell
Lowering energy consumption isn't the end goal, lowering harmful emissions is.
If in the future, energy is produced entirely by solar, hydro, and nuclear,
vehicles/machinery use little or no fossil fuels, and air conditioners have
continued to be improved wrt use of coolant/leakage, then there's no need to
reduce consumption because consumption is harmless.

In the meantime, pricing poor people out of electric is not a good solution.

~~~
njarboe
At some point waste heat itself will warm the planet enough to matter. With
exponential growth one can get there pretty quickly. A few hundred years. At
some point we should add a heat tax to compliment the carbon tax (that we
should already have in place).

~~~
mrob
True, but very low priority compared to getting CO2 under control. From
"Sustainable Energy – without the hot air" by David MacKay, pages 170 to 171:

"the average solar power absorbed by atmosphere, land, and oceans is 238
W/m^2; doubling the atmospheric CO2 concentration would effectively increase
the net heating by 4 W/m^2. This 1.7% increase in heating is believed to be
bad news for climate. Variations in solar power during the 11-year solar cycle
have a range of 0.25 W/m^2. So now let’s assume that in 100 years or so, the
world population is 10 billion, and everyone is living at a European standard
of living, using 125 kWh per day derived from fossil sources, from nuclear
power, or from mined geothermal power. The area of the earth per person would
be 51 000 m^2. Dividing the power per person by the area per person, we find
that the extra power contributed by human energy use would be 0.1 W/m^2.
That’s one fortieth of the 4 W/m^2 that we’re currently fretting about, and a
little smaller than the 0.25 W/m^2 effect of solar variations. So yes, under
these assumptions, human power production would /just/ show up as a
contributor to global climate change."

[http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_170.shtml](http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_170.shtml)

~~~
njarboe
It seems to me the assumption that energy consumption per person has peaked at
the current European level and not increase in 100 years wildly false.
Compelling new uses for energy will be found and other cultures are less
likely, I think, to restrict personal energy consumption as much as Europe
does currently.

~~~
mrob
That might be true, but remember that MacKay's numbers assume 100% non-
renewable energy. In reality, solar panel prices are dropping fast, and
they'll likely make up a substantial portion of the energy supply. Solar
energy captured with photovoltaic panels is solar energy that's not heating
the earth directly, so the waste heat problem is much smaller. The same is
true for all renewable sources, e.g. winds and tides heat the earth uselessly
if we don't capture them.

~~~
njarboe
I agree. Keep power production on Earth to like 50% solar (wind, sunlight,
tidal, etc) and there will be no problem with this heat issue. Bezos has
specifically stated that he hopes to put industrial production off earth to
avoid the industrial heat production problem in the far future.

------
Reedx
Something I've long wondered about: Do restaurants, malls and movie theaters
need to be that damn cold? Does it really increase sales that much?

It's a major pet peeve of mine. Office buildings are often much cooler than
they need to be too. I think most places, including homes, could reduce A/C
significantly.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Part of the problem is humidity removal. There are many times when I'll lower
the thermostat even though the temperature is already at 76F, but I need to
get the humidity lower in order to make the room/house comfortable.

It's especially the case at night where, if the humidity were lower, I'd just
turn off A/C and open the windows.

------
johngalt
A/C consumes less energy than heating.

A/C is effectively a closed system when operating. A fireplace or furnace is
not.

A/C is needed most in places and times where solar panels work the best.
Heating is the opposite.

Objectively living in Maine has a significantly higher environmental cost than
living in Arizona.

~~~
TheBeardKing
Seriously, what's with the AC-shaming in this thread and in this article,
which doesn't once mention the energy required to heat homes, and that it's
several times that to cool [1]. Must be some northern elitism.

[1]
[https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=10271](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=10271)

~~~
Zarath
Because nearly all warm weather is objectively livable, whereas cold weather
is actively dangerous. If you're using AC to be able to survive then you
aren't the target. The target is the Walmarts that cool the building to 68
degrees when it's 80 and beautiful outside or the people who just refuse to
open a window and use AC instead, or the people who can't stand a single iota
of sweat or slight discomfort.

~~~
oftenwrong
The same applies to heating. Even when it is below-freezing people heat
buildings to the point that you can wear a t-shirt indoors. Instead of wearing
more clothing, or enduring slight discomfort, people waste energy.

One particularly annoying example is the train. The trains always have the
heat blasting. I, like most people, have to walk to the train, and stand on
the (often outdoor) platform, so I wear clothing that will keep me comfortable
while walking, and while waiting on the platform. As soon as I'm on the oven-
like train, I have to strip off all layers to avoid sweating. I assume this is
for the benefit of people who do not dress appropriately for the cold. I would
prefer that they optimised for the opposite.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The heat on the train may be 'free', as waste head from the engine? In that
case cooling it is the real cost.

~~~
oftenwrong
I don't think that is the case. If it is, I am fine with it.

------
dragonwriter
We probably don't need to do much of anything about air conditioning
specifically, we just need to price in the externalities of energy use
generally.

But it might make sense to incentivize (whether through positive incentives or
negative incentives on traditional AC, or both) use of geothermal heat pumps
instead of air-source heat pumps, since the latter is, pretty much by
definition, least efficient when most needed—long-term, they are already a net
win for the consumer as well as the environment, but the payoff time is long
enough and traditional AC culturally-established enough that it doesn't even
tend to be considered as an option enough.

~~~
3pt14159
In Toronto we have this huge system of underground cooling that transfers cool
from the lake. It's great.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_water_source_cooling#Firs...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_water_source_cooling#First_system_in_Canada)

~~~
gtdawg
Pretty cool! One thing to note is the cooling capacity is limited to the
consumption rate of the city based on how it's designed right now.

> The cold water drawn from Lake Ontario's deep layer in the Enwave system is
> not returned directly to the lake once it has been run through the heat
> exchange system. The Enwave system only uses water that is destined to meet
> the city's domestic water needs. Therefore, the Enwave system does not
> pollute the lake with a plume of waste heat.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And then it goes down the drain in the homes an goes ….?

------
thinkcontext
The amount of harm from refrigerants, the chemicals used in cooling systems to
move heat around, is vastly underappreciated so its good to see it mentioned.

"HFCs trap between 1,000 and 9,000 times as much heat as the same amount of
CO2, meaning they are much more potent causes of global warming. On this
basis, Paul Hawken of Project Drawdown, a think-tank, calculates that
improving air-conditioners could do more than anything else to reduce
greenhouse gases."

~~~
Tharkun
There are heat pumps which use CO2 as their refrigerant. Apparently they are
more efficient (and less potentially hazardous for people and climate) than
most alternatives.

~~~
thinkcontext
From what I've seen it's used in water heater heat pumps, not space heating
and cooling. Perhaps with tighter regulations on HFCs CO2 will be more widely
used.

------
725686
Whenever I go to the USA, I just hate how cold (summer)/hot (winter) are the
malls and other closed spaces. Why can't they set it at a reasonable temp? I'm
sure that will help a bit to reduce energy waste.

~~~
izzydata
I don't know of many malls that still exist, but I often find that most large
enclosed spaces set a temperature and leave it at that 24/7 365. It is often
about 70-75.

------
phonz
AC can use refrigerants that are not pollutants. Also AC by definition can
always be solar powered. This is literally a non-issue.

Here’s a question: why do we not shelter our homes and buildings? It doesn’t
make any sense to let the sun bake the house and then continually refrigerate
the inside of it. Just string some cloth or literally any material over the
house with an air gap. It would cost almost nothing compared the the total
cost of the house and it would save tons of money on cooling alone. So why
isn’t it done? Well it is, but if your shade structure isn’t organic and green
leafed, you get run out of town. Such a shame. We need some kind of artificial
tree.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
What if you like the view? You can't consider these things in isolation from
other factors.

~~~
phonz
I don’t understand. The view would be the same. It would be the same as having
as having roofs. Just slightly raised and maybe a different color. No problem
with views.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
When I read "over the house" I was thinking that this shield would go around
the house.

Most of the heat entering my house is through the walls and windows. There's a
huge air gap and thick insulation below the roof, so that's not much of a
problem.

~~~
phonz
A little overhang would solve that mostly.

------
scarejunba
Nobody is going to listen to people in heated homes asking other people to
stop cooling their homes. It's not going to happen.

According to
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142150...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421508005168)
cooling will exceed heating in 2060. So the real problem here are rich cold
countries.

------
kalleboo
> Without drastic improvements in air-conditioners’ efficiency

The biggest gain in air conditioner efficiency is not in the air conditioner
itself, but in the housing it is used in. In Asia, lots of housing is built
cheaply with terrible insulation, so the air conditioning is burning
electricity in waste to cool the great outdoors.

~~~
jay-anderson
I heard on the radio recently that even though cities have been growing the
overall water usage hasn't grown with it. The report attributed it to more
efficient toilets. If cities required better insulation would we see a similar
effect or are there better things to attack in general?

It makes sense that moving from terrible insulation to decent insulation would
be a good move. Do we know how good? Have there been estimates on the savings?
How about moving from decent insulation to excellent insulation?

~~~
soundwave106
From what I'm seeing, moving from terrible insulation to decent insulation is
an excellent idea.

Moving from decent insulation to excellent insulation... maybe not so much.
There is a point of diminishing returns where more R values in your insulation
does not gain you much.

According to this fact sheet from the North Carolina energy office:
[https://files.nc.gov/ncdeq/Environmental%20Assistance%20and%...](https://files.nc.gov/ncdeq/Environmental%20Assistance%20and%20Customer%20Service/IAS%20Energy%20Efficiency/Opportunities/Insulation_Guidelines.pdf)

"Insulation installation which brings a building up to standard can result in
a savings of 1—5% of HVAC costs depending on the conditions before the
improvements are implemented."

However, if you combine insulation with inspecting ductwork / windows / doors
/ attics and plugging as many air leaks as practically possible, the estimated
savings rate rises considerably. Energystar's site
([https://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home_sealing.hm_impro...](https://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home_sealing.hm_improvement_methodology))
for instance estimates 11% of utility bill savings with a combination of
methods.

------
pimmen
In the Nordic countries, we just can't survive without our heating. Without
it, we could probably not produce as much during the winter as we do now. Even
with triple pane glass being the norm up here, we still consume massive
amounts of energy every winter to keep warm. People are genuinely scared of
having variable utility prices and many rather opt for a fixed price for a
fixed time period, because you never know if you're going to have a really
harsh winter, like we did this one that saw enormous amounts of snow.

If we could use the radiators and central heating to transform our countries
into economic power houses, I don't see how we have the right to stop
countries in the tropics from making virtually the same journey, albeit with
cooling rather than heating.

------
ekianjo
Energy-wise, Airconditioning is quite cheap. In Japan we use "aircon" pretty
much all the time in summer (it's really, really hard to live without when
it's 35C+ in 90% humidity) yet the electricity bills are much more reasonable
compared to what we need to pay in winter when we need to heat up the place
(temporarily only).

------
chosenbreed
Interesting...there a few comments putting forward the case for energy
expenditure to provide heating and cooling. Can't really argue with any of
them. However, I wonder how much of the need is driven by the modern
lifestyles we have now. I appreciate that the planet is getting warmer (and
that perhaps we're seeing more severe winters) but how did people get by 100
years ago? Or a 1000 years ago? How did people survive the heat? How did they
survive the cold? We can't turn back the clock but perhaps there's something
to gain by looking at the past...

~~~
chrisseaton
> How did people survive the heat? How did they survive the cold?

Well they often didn’t. People still die from cold winters and hot summers,
especially old people. Air conditioning and heating is not a luxury for some
of these people.

~~~
dcx
This. I'm from a tropical country. My grandmother told me stories about
plantation work back in the day - people used to literally drop dead from the
heat all the time.

------
HillaryBriss
_At current rates, Saudi Arabia will be using more energy to run air-
conditioners in 2030 than it now exports as oil._

There are 33 million people in Saudi Arabia.

------
mirimir
With global climate change, energy use for air conditioning will arguably
increase. Given the timing, it's a good use for PV. But to the extent that CO2
emissions result, you have a positive feedback.

------
forapurpose
Some tips to minimize a/c usage with zero loss of comfort:

1\. You only need you to be cool, not the entire room or building. Find
solutions that cool you - including wearing cool, loose-fitting clothing. It's
absurd to warm yourself up by trapping body heat and then to use an a/c unit
to cool the entire room / suite / building in order to cool yourself down
again.

2\. Use fans; enjoy the pleasures of a gentle breeze. Convection is a powerful
thing, and unless the ambient air is warmer than your body temperature, the
breeze probably will cool you off. The new tower fans are especially effective
and user-friendly - they aren't ugly, you don't need to attach them to
anything and they don't need much clearance, and the breeze is well-
attenuated. Their effect is surprisingly powerful.

3\. Imagine what temperature would be comfortable for sitting outside, in the
shade, with a breeze (see #2). 26-27C (~79-81F)? A little lower? A little
higher? Maybe even experiment a little, and set your thermostat to that
temperature.

4\. Never turn on the a/c if it's cool enough outside (see #3). If you need
more air exchange with the outside, get an exhaust fan.

5\. Open the windows when it's cool outside, then as soon as it starts warming
up - probably at sunrise - close them. (I wish there was a home automation
system that would do it for me). Even on ~30C+ (86F+) days, that's been enough
to keep the place cool until mid-afternoon.

6\. If none of that is enough, turn on the a/c. I'll bet you won't want it
nearly as often.

I'd guess that we've cut our a/c usage by ~80% with zero impact on our
comfort.

------
yourapostasy
Scrolled through comments up to time of writing this, and didn't see much
discussion of the low-hanging fruit still available to reduce A/C-related
electrical demand in the US.

Commenters are bringing up insulation, but not in detail. We need the
PassivHaus insulation standard with droplet-based air tightness treatment
(that brings the air tightness to about twice or better than PassivHaus
specifies) as the _minimum_ required. Ideally, city-scale recycling centers
would redirect used styrofoam to re-form with limonene into insulating blocks,
keeping it out of landfills and oceans, and entrain into a more permanent use.

Real estate industry needs go along; advertise and market that 4-8 foot thick
insulation in walls are attractive for starters. 3-6 inch gap rain screen on
all outside surfaces, white or light-colored reflective takes out ~5 degrees F
of cooling effort with completely passive design.

Overrule all HOAs and city building codes nationwide at the federal level, and
anyone who wants to re-position their property improvement to take advantage
of the solar path may do so without seeking permission. That is, the footprint
alignment of any planned improvement (new or modification) that is aligned
with a federally-published local solar path is an instant "shall-issue"
permit; the actual footprint size, dimensions, permeable cover ratio, _etc._
still goes through normal permitting processes. Anyone who wants to build
long-overhang porches that screen out all but the last X minutes of sunrise or
sunset may do so without seeking permission.

Overrule all local jurisdictions at the federal level, and any enclosed space
that does not use A/C, that is, only has dehumidification (no active cooling)
and/or ceiling fans, do not count in property taxes, or count for something
like 10% of normal assessment.

------
daxorid
Why do articles like these never mention the fact that air conditioners are
heat pumps, and therefore quite a bit more efficient at cooling than oil or
electric furnaces are at heating?

I rarely see similar articles bemoaning the carbon emissions associated with
heating, say, wealthy New England apartments. It's always those damn poor
people in the South ruining the environment.

~~~
mrguyorama
I think people have an assumption that sweltering heat may be uncomfortable,
but is "less likely" to kill you compared to 20 degree weather.

I don't know if that's even remotely true. Also keep in mind the vast majority
of people heating their New England apartments are NOT wealthy, by the simple
fact that the majority of New Englanders are not wealthy

------
manishas
Everything in life is a calculation and needs to be balanced. We need to
encourage people and businesses to use their ACs only when required, but at
the end of the day, we need to find better ways of saving the environment
while still supporting 7B people on the planet to live reasonably comfortably.

------
baybal2
The story with aircon efficiency is the same as with heating in high
latitudes.

Building with high volume, aspect ratio and thermal insulation are more
efficient, but very few high rises are made like that: luxury high rises are
made for people who can bang few hundred bucks per month on heating/cooling
just to have panoramic windows, and cheapest high rises are made with a single
consideration of maximising kilobucks per square metre.

Were building codes to enforce energy efficiency, builders of luxury high
rises will scream murder.

What I calculated with my level of math, it is safe to say that proper
insulation, reducing glazing to 30-40% of the facade, and proper central air
conditioning will drop energy use of a 40 storey high rise by 30 to 40
percents.

------
drewmol
In case anyone else was curious -

According to various internet sources: [0]"according to a 1958 NASA report
people can live indefinitely in environments that range between roughly 40
degrees F and 95 degrees F (4 and 35 degrees C), if the latter temperature
occurs at no more than 50 percent relative humidity."

[0][https://www.livescience.com/34131-infographic-limits-of-
huma...](https://www.livescience.com/34131-infographic-limits-of-human-
survival.html)

------
lbriner
The good thing about AC is that it generates heat as a by-product but in most
cases, this is not used. Imagine if local air-con could provide all of a
hospital/school/government building's hot water (and heating since they tend
to roast in the UK).

Perhaps there is a market for a company that links the air-con user and local
large users of hot water or even factories that need heat for their work.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Yes heat exchangers are well understood. You're mainly talking about the
condenser side of an HVAC system. Cooling towers have been around a while. I
imagine you'd need a hybrid approach. I doubt you'll find many buildings where
the hot water needs are 1:1 with the waste heat from the HVAC system. Now you
have two problems. Your hot water heater just got really complex.

However, building codes could mandate that energy for heating water first come
from waste heat from the HVAC system. That would drive innovation in the space
and who knows maybe it would become common. It's kind of like killing a fly
with a hammer though, plus existing structures would get grandfathered in.
Energy generation seem to me to be the better bang for the buck.

What would be really awesome is if someone invented a very efficient
industrial thermoelectric generator that could be used in the condenser of an
HVAC system. Think, regenerative breaking.

------
toastermoster
I've often wondered how feasible it would be to combine thermal storage with
battery storage and solar energy production. During the winter such a system
could heat water while producing excess solar power and during the summer
maybe produce ice with excess solar power during. I wonder if that could be
more efficient than storing chemical energy through batteries alone.

------
zanethomas
In 1955, when I was 5 years old, my family moved to Pasadena, CA. There was no
air conditioning anywhere I can recall, definitely not at home or at school. I
moved to Seattle about 30 years later. I returned to Southern California a few
years ago and was surprised to find that most people here think they can't
live without air-conditioning.

------
j45
Having more available productive hours per day in hot climates helps everyone
get further in their lives, however they may choose.

I didn't grow up with A/C, but it's definitely the one thing I don't hesitate
to turn on when needed.

It would help if air conditioning technology could innovate and improve
immensely to attack some of the valid issues it has.

------
kqr2
Is geothermal hvac a more efficient option? Has it been used in large
buildings?

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/great-
energy-...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/great-energy-
challenge/2013/10-myths-about-geothermal-heating-and-cooling/)

------
pro_zac
Not totally on topic, but the thing that shocks me as ridiculously inefficient
is huge freezer aisles in grocery stores in cold climates. They heat the store
and then cool the freezers. Can't they just pump in outside air? Granted this
wouldn't work year round in many places, but I feel like there is a better
solution.

~~~
alkonaut
Freezers provide heat outside the freezer - which is in the store. So while
not the most efficient kind of heating it’s not “heat the store _and_ cool the
freezers”. 1kWh spent cooling a fridge is 1kWh heat added to the store.

(This depends on where the freezer heat exchangers are)

~~~
pro_zac
That makes sense. So it is better to have freezers running in a store you are
trying to heat up than one you are trying to cool. I had it completely
backward.

~~~
julbaxter
No, you had it right. You need to cool the freezer because you put it in the
store. The more you heat the store (and the freezer is heating the store), the
more you need to cool the freezer.

------
userbinator
The ironic thing about the replacement of CFCs is that the replacement
refrigerants have all tended to be less efficient, toxic, flammable, or a
combination of all those. One has to wonder how the environmental effects of
the latter compare.

------
basicplus2
Reverse cycle arconditioners use between 3 to 5x more power than a dedicated
cooling system in cooling mode or a dedicated heating system in heating mode

------
j1vms
Don't tell anyone that thinks A/C comes at a high environmental cost, anything
about what would be needed to make Mars viable for even a single person to
_stay_ there. They might blow a gasket. Forget about if we get to building a
small village on the Red Planet.

------
RobertSmith
We are cooking our planet to refrigerate the diminishing part that's still
habitable.

~~~
kasey_junk
And to heat the part that isn’t.

------
nwah1
I'm surprised that there isn't some kind of huge multi-billion dollar prize to
improve air conditioners.

Environmental groups have so much money, and they waste it lobbying for bans
on plastic straws. How about some R&D, please.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
I don't have a subscription currently so I didn't read the full article but I
find it almost impossible to get any work done without air-conditioning on a
very hot day so limiting their use seems impossible without also impacting
productivity and economic output. For this reason the only solution seems to
be either a technological breakthrough or the continuation of iterative
efficiency gains.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
One could also just move to (northern coastal) California, but that has its
own costs.

~~~
mikestew
Why, they don't run A/C there? 'cuz they do in Seattle, which I find to be
ridiculous. I keep a fleece vest in my office during the summer. There are
going to be historians digging through our rubble, trying to figure out what
happened four hundred years from now, and they're going to say, "they lived in
a temperate climate where it rarely got above 80F, but they ran A/C non-stop
for four months out of the year. No wonder the fucking ice caps melted."

And I think that's something some commenters are missing: no one is asking
India to turn off the A/C. But maybe we don't need to replicate the grocer's
freezer section in my office just because the weather finally turned nice.

~~~
tzs
Seattle may be over air-conditioned in offices, but when it comes to homes the
story is quite different.

Seattle has the lowest percentage of households with air conditioning of any
of the metro areas included in the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey.
The only place almost as low is San Francisco. Here are the five lowest:

    
    
      33.7% Seattle
      36.3% San Francisco
      69.9% Portland
      72.8% Los Angeles
      79.4% Denver
    

and the five highest:

    
    
      99.5% New Orleans
      99.3% Tampa
      99.3% Austin
      99.3% Las Vegas
      99.2% Kansas City
      

[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-is-
le...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-is-least-air-
conditioned-metro-area-in-the-u-s-census-data-show-so-how-do-locals-keep-
cool/)

~~~
amyjess
Not too long ago, I was exploring places to move to should my state (Texas)
pass a law hostile to trans people that they were considering. The bill
failed, so I stayed, but before then I did _a lot_ of research.

I had a number of people recommend certain Seattle suburbs to me (particularly
Bellevue and Renton), and it was towards the top of my list for a while...
until some friends of mine who lived there told me that very few homes have
central AC. That was an immediate nope. Crossed the whole state off my list.

I cannot tolerate any level of heat. I keep my AC at 60°F or below all the
time, and I blast it even in winter. The only time I ever turn my AC off is
when it's below freezing out.

On a side note, should Texas revive that bill next year and it passes, I've
decided I'm moving to Las Vegas.

~~~
specializeded
Perhaps you should move somewhere cooler anyways? 60F year round in _Texas_ is
absurd, and borderline appalling.

------
billfruit
I am ever amazed at the usage fahrenheit in the US. Do even the weather
reports state temp like in fahrenheit?

Also sometimes wonder if the weather reports should be tell ing wet bulb
temperatures, because it also gives an indication of humidity.

~~~
johnchristopher
What amazes me the most is how I never see any Americans online trying to
convince others that the imperial system is better than the ISU. Like... they
know that it's just out of habit :].

Day-to-day the inches/feet dance is more annoying to me than the celsius-
farenheit thing though.

~~~
int_19h
Inches and feet are easier to approximate though (e.g. 3 feet = 1 m is "good
enough" for most practical uses), whereas Fahrenheit and Celsius have this
weird 5/9 conversion factor. There are simplified formulae for F/C conversions
as well, but they produce deviations that are too large for practical use for
many common temperatures, especially if you live in an area with real winter &
summer.

~~~
baddox
You don't really need to remember that many mappings of Fahrenheit to Celsius,
at least for weather. Remembering approximately mappings for 0-100 by 10s
should be enough for most people.

------
overcast
Let's focus more on the worthless wastes of energy like cryptocurrency, and
less on life saving ones like air conditioning. The latter does FAR more right
than wrong. Should we have more energy efficient machines, and less harmful
chemicals? Of course. But out of ALL of the technology to write about, air
conditioning contributing to environmental destruction should be on the bottom
of the list. When it's 120F inside a tin can house in India, you go tell those
people they should be laying off the harmful AC while you're trading imaginary
internet coins.

~~~
imgabe
I don't have numbers at hand, but I'm willing to bet the energy spent on air
conditioning dwarfs crypto by at least an order of magnitude. Focusing on the
biggest areas first is usually the most efficient.

~~~
overcast
I don't agree. It's like reducing your debt. Focusing on paying off the
smallest debts first is most efficient. Always start with low hanging fruit.
Knock those out, and you see real progress.

~~~
imgabe
There's _tons_ of low-hanging fruit in regards to air-conditioning. Even a
simple thing like relaxing dress codes so that people could dress
appropriately for the weather, so the set point for the air conditioning moved
up a few degrees, could be a huge savings if everybody did it. Nobody should
be wearing a wool suit in the middle of summer.

Meanwhile something like "stop using cryptocurrency" is not feasible. Are we
supposed to have every country enact laws to ban it? Who's going to enforce
that? Let me guess, a bunch of people wearing wool suits sitting in an air
conditioned office...

~~~
overcast
So, don't focus on the biggest areas first then? Make up your mind. Are we
supposed to have every country enact laws to enforce weather appropriate dress
codes? Who is going to be the fashion police?

