
Americans' Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly (2015) - jseliger
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-07-22/americans-air-conditioning-habit-is-eco-friendly
======
rland
If we used solar power, AC could be close to carbon neutral, because the peak
intensity almost perfectly coincides with temperature. Higher temperatures
mitigate the big downside of solar to a greater extent.

Compare with heating, which always peaks in the evening hours.

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geff82
Actually it is possible to have some kind of really eco friendly air
conditioning and it has been invented (a thousand years ago?) in Iran. It is
called "Badgir" and it is a pity that their invention has not been much more
adapted by modern society (Iranians themselves do not built new ones.... what
a pity):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher)

~~~
jdietrich
Prior to air conditioning, many American buildings were similarly designed for
natural cooling. Air conditioning has allowed for a style of architecture
that's inherently inefficient.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/keepi...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/keepin-
it-cool-how-the-air-conditioner-made-modern-america/241892/)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Air conditioning has allowed for a style of architecture that's inherently
> inefficient.

While this is true, it's also true that air conditioning has allowed for
settlement in places that were basically unlivable before, like much of the
American South. You can only go so far with clever architecture.

~~~
DocTomoe
Oh please, unliveable? People have lived in the mediterranean area, in Egypt
and the Arabian peninsular, in the jungles of Indochina, in the Amazon basin,
long before air conditioning was even a thing.

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ced
_Americans ' Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly_

Is there any part of the article that supports the claim of the title? Did I
miss it?

~~~
cfmcdonald
Yes, the claim is that living in a warmer climate and using A/C to cool 10-20
degrees in the summer is more energy efficient than living in a cold one and
heating by 40-50 degrees in the winter.

~~~
noobermin
Something about this seems wrong...like this is a very poor argument to even
make.

~~~
tracer4201
Why? I don’t have depth in the specifics, but what’s the critical issue with
the argument?

~~~
majewsky
False dichotomy. It's missing the third option of living in a warm climate,
but using more energy-efficient architecture to cool homes.

~~~
Gibbon1
A good point someone made, we replace about 1% of our housing stock a year.
And build 2-3% more. At that rate the effect of passive house regulations
won't have any effect on CO2 emissions over the next 20-30 years.

So you aren't going to fix anything with expensive passive houses. Especially
since passive houses need major repairs every 10-20 years.

What's needed to to ban gas and oil fired furnaces and make the grid 100%
renewable. Everything else is a distraction.

~~~
lgats
Currently, in the Midwest US, you'll pay around 3-5x more per month for
heating in the winter using forced air electric vs gas. A reasonable winter
gas bill of $150/month would easily push $400/month using electric.

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NeedMoreTea
No.

A properly designed and insulated building should not need very much of
either.

So where are the KWh / sq m comparisons? Or comparing insulation levels? How
did she reach this conclusion?

Maybe it's better than heating in a comparably insulated building. No chance
of finding out from this rubbish.

Given McArdle's background, I probably shouldn't expect the piece to mention
any of that.

~~~
rayiner
> A properly designed and insulated building should not need very much of
> either.

Where are these magical "properly designed and insulated buildings?" Also, how
does insulation help keep out infrared radiation, which is a key heating
source if your place has sufficient windows.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Well double and triple glazing, usually with coatings to minimise solar
heating are readily enough available.

A lot of the rest of the magic comes from old approaches found in most regions
before we had cheap heating and cooling that encouraged cheap building that
paid no heed to locale. Usually working with the local environment - to
encourage shade, cooling, airflow, or to retain heat. Simple stuff like solar
chimneys, windcatchers, or for cooler areas encouraging a greenhouse effect,
far removed from full blown passive houses.

Most of which can benefit from modern materials and controls, and be combined
with aircon and central heating to achieve comfort for a lot less fuel.

------
alanfranz
I don't understand the article. I'm ok with the fact that an hotter city
requires air conditioning. But it seems that, quite often, US indoor
temperatures loom around 18-20C, while in EU we usually aim at around 24-25C.

That's the most common objection we make to American tourists, and the article
says nothing about that.

~~~
baxtr
When I lived in the States it felt unbelievably weird that people in summer
would wear sweatshirts because it was so freezing cold inside. My fellow
American colleagues thought however that was the most normal thing to do. I
still don’t get it.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
They want to make everyone happy. If you feel it’s too cold, you can throw
something on. In the other direction, you don’t have any option if you feel
it’s too hot after you’ve taken off your sweater/jacket.

~~~
u801e
> In the other direction, you don’t have any option if you feel it’s too hot
> after you’ve taken off your sweater/jacket.

A ceiling or pedestal fan could work and would require far less energy to
operate.

~~~
thaumasiotes
If by "work" you mean "spin on the ceiling without perceptibly affecting the
temperature", then sure.

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nullwasamistake
It's a common misconception, at least in the US, that AC uses more power than
heat. Tons of people leave the AC off to "save power" but almost nobody turns
down heat in the winter.

The article touches on this, but AC in hot areas is far more energy efficient
than heating in cold ones, because humans prefer a balmy ~75 degrees. Even in
the hottest places, there's only a 30 degree difference inside and outside. In
areas where temps get below freezing, you need to maintain 40 degree+
difference.

What the article doesn't mention, is that AC is also 3-10X more efficient than
heat even without factoring in temperate difference. In warm areas we can use
heat pumps for heat and AC which function by moving heat from one side to the
other. The downside is that they don't work well in cold temperatures.

In cold areas you can't move heat, there's just not enough of it, so you have
to create it. This is massively inneficient and makes living in warm/hot areas
far more eco friendly than somewhere like chicago

~~~
sokoloff
> The downside is that [heat pumps] don't work well in cold temperatures.

There are now low temperature or "hyper heat" heat pumps which can function
effectively to temperatures well below freezing, some as low as 5° F (-15° C).

Your point is not "wrong", but simply "somewhat less true than it used to be".

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jstewartmobile
Temp delta to cool in the south may be lower than to warm in the north, but
not convinced it's a net energy savings.

Not an AC guy, but the figure bandied about in the data center was that it
takes 2W of power to remove 1W of heat.

Anyone have a less hand-wavy figure?

~~~
titanomachy
Modern data centres are a _lot_ more efficient than that. Google currently
uses 0.11 watts of overhead per 1 watt of compute, and that overhead includes
voltage conversions. [0]

As for residential systems, typical AC unit efficiency ranges from ~15 to ~25
SEER, which is essentially BTUs of cooling per watt•hour under "typical"
conditions. Stripping away the weird units, that's 5-7x efficiency. So 5-7
watts of heat removed per watt spent, under whatever the EPA's definition is
for "typical" conditions.

[0]
[https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal](https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal)

~~~
jstewartmobile
Good on Megan then! I'm in the south. We have a lot of Germans down here who
bitch about how we do everything--AC included.

I'll have to send her a thank you card.

~~~
titanomachy
I think it's in bad taste to voluntarily move somewhere and then complain
about everything.

Keep in mind that heating efficiency can also be better than 1:1. Pulling heat
from the outdoors (heat pump) and putting it inside is more efficient than
making new heat (radiator, furnace).

~~~
jstewartmobile
Just had a chance to read this--thanks. From the average, the data center guys
I'm talking to aren't wrong in a heuristic sense--just inefficient:

" _According to the Uptime Institute 's 2014 Data Center Survey, the global
average (PUE) of respondents' largest data centers is around 1.7._"

From what I recall, Google does AC-to-DC outside of the cooled area, and has
their own custom approach to UPS. The article adds that they leave the cool
aisle at a toasty 80F+, and make use of free cooling techniques.

Most non-FAANG data centers are using stock Dell/HP/Cisco servers with
redundant internal AC adapters, attached to an APC UPS (with its own internal
AC adapter)--all actively cooled to 70-something F in some poorly-insulated
re-purposed downtown building.

I think Google made many of those improvements a very long time ago. I'd have
expected their practices to be ubiquitous by now, but they're not...

~~~
titanomachy
Yikes. I expected the average to be worse, but not by that much. No wonder
FAANG is eating the world.

As far as the environment is concerned, we'd better get our butts in gear and
move to the cloud :)

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dharma1
Aside from the obvious - better insulation - I think deep geothermal can be
quite an eco-friendly way to heat homes in the near future.

------
adventured
> Unlike a cold winter with no heat, a hot summer with no cooling won't
> definitely kill you.

That's very blatantly false. And it's going to get a lot worse if the planet
continues to heat up.

2003 heat wave "In France, 14,802 heat-related deaths (mostly among the
elderly) occurred during the heat wave, according to the French National
Institute of Health."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave)

NYT 2003: "The staggering number of deaths in France -- perhaps 5,000 by the
government's estimate but possibly more than twice that ... The victims were
generally found inside apartments, houses and hotels. In virtually every case,
there was no air-conditioner."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/22/world/lack-of-air-
conditi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/22/world/lack-of-air-conditioning-
cited-in-france-s-death-toll.html)

~~~
cfmcdonald
It is not false. It says "won't definitely kill you". A cold winter will
definitely kill you without heat, but a hot summer won't _definitely_ kill
you, it just _might_ kill you.

Perhaps you read it as "definitely won't kill you", which would be false.

~~~
adventured
Those people definitely died, so the lack of AC definitely did kill them. It
was false in their thousands of cases.

~~~
jgwil2
"won't definitely" =/= "definitely won't" in this context.

