Why don’t European homes have air conditioning?

Academics date the invention of air conditioning to the Florida Panhandle in the 1850s. Now, roughly 90 percent of U.S. homes have some form of air conditioning, according to U.S. Census data . For decades in Europe, leaders and scholars scoffed at U.S. reliance on air conditioning as another example of American excess. In 1992, Cambridge economist Gwyn Prins warned that “physical addiction to air-conditioned air is the most pervasive and least noticed epidemic in modern America.” Air-conditioned offices are commonplace in Europe, but it is exceedingly rare to find AC units in homes. According to one industry estimate , just 3 percent of homes in Germany and less than 5 percent of homes in France have air conditioning. In Britain, government estimates suggest that less than 5 percent of homes in England have AC units installed. Part of this is because, historically, there was simply far less reason to cool the air in Paris, France, than in Paris, Tex. European countries had warm summers, but they rarely reached the sort of persistently high temperatures seen in the American South. And even on scorching-hot days, the air in Rome was unlikely to be as humid as in Seoul, Tokyo or Washington. In Britain, better known for damp than heat, houses were traditionally built to retain warmth rather than expel it.

Is rising heat leading Europe to reconsider AC?

Even before the current heat wave, European nations had been moving toward wider adoption of air conditioning. In a 2018 report, the International Energy Agency noted that AC ownership in Italy, Spain, Greece and southern France had already been rising rapidly for the past decade . The IEA report estimated that the number of air-conditioning units in the European Union would more than double from 110 million in 2019 to 275 million in 2050. Most in the industry have no doubt why AC demand is rising: soaring summer temperatures. Europe is now a global hot spot, with an increasing number of heat waves over the past two decades. Research by the U.K. Met Office found that the country was now 10 times as likely to experience a day over 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) than it would have been without climate change. Now, some in Europe are coming to accept that some AC usage may be needed to save lives. After a heat wave killed an estimated 15,000 people in France in 2003, air conditioning was introduced to some nursing homes in a bid to protect the most vulnerable. “People clearly are starting to see hot summers as being something here to stay and are desperate to find a permanent solution for the future,” said Richard Salmon, director of the London-based Air Conditioning Company, noting that his company had gone from 20 consultations a day during a “normal” summer to 300 requests for a consultation over the past week.

Can — or should — Europe adapt to AC?

On a case-by-case basis, switching over to AC in Britain isn’t an insurmountable problem, Salmon said. Britain’s houses, despite their age, can generally have central AC installed with “minimal fuss.” The biggest problem generally is government red tape if the building is listed for conservation or if the home is in an apartment block. On a wider scale, however, the rise in AC use across an entire continent raises huge questions about sustainability. European demand for air conditioning would be only the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of the population in India, for example, does not have air conditioning despite persistently high temperatures. The IEA has warned of a potential “cool crunch” as global demand for air conditioning outpaces electrical grids and energy supplies. Europe’s current heat wave has coincided with government demands for consumers to use less energy amid concerns about the supply of gas from Russia. “I really can’t blame Europeans for buying air conditioners right now,” Cox said. “Those who lived through the 2003 heat wave that killed tens of thousands were told that it was a fluke, something that happens once every few centuries. Now they’re being hit again, just 19 years later, with more likely to come.” There may be alternatives to air conditioning, from new technology such as “heat pumps” that are more energy efficient to older technology such as the use of smaller rooms and better insulation. But air conditioning is likely to be a part of Europe’s future in some way or another. “It is an essential lifesaving tool during heat waves, but most of the climate impact comes from its more routine, lavish use throughout society, continuously, for months at a time,” Cox said. “That overuse also prevents us from sufficiently acclimatizing to hot weather, making us more physically and psychologically vulnerable to heat and therefore even more dependent on air conditioning.”

clockThis article was published more than 1 year ago

Why European homes (usually) don’t have air conditioning

By Adam Taylor

July 20, 2022 at 7:19 p.m. EDT

A pedestrian in London on July 20. (Andy Rain/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

As temperatures in Britain soared to an alarming high of 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) this week, some residents resorted to simple, timeworn measures to try to cool down. They waved handheld fans, wetted towels and reached for the ice.

But for others, it was time for a change. Amid the record-breaking heat, they stood ready to embrace what many in Europe have long dismissed as an unnecessary luxury and a planet-destroying menace: air conditioning.

The energy-intensive cooling system used widely across the United States has grown increasingly attractive to Britons and other Europeans now dealing with brutal summer temperatures caused in part by human-induced climate change. In recent days, extreme heat has scorched much of Western Europe, kindling wildfires in France, Greece and Italy and causing the deaths of more than 1,000 people in Portugal alone.

Sales of portable air-conditioning units rose 2,420 percent in a week, British retailer Sainsbury’s said Monday. And a surge in demand for centralized AC units in London has some installation companies booked through the fall.

But why weren’t European households already equipped with air conditioning? And will Europe fall victim to a “U.S.-style addiction to AC,” as climate control researcher Stan Cox has warned?