Why has this become a meme? Sure aircon is nice but there are also reasons why it's not common in some parts of Europe. Here in central Prague a lot of the buildings are historic and protected, so you can't just gouge out a section of the building to install an aircon. Also it's generally only hot enough for aircon maybe 2-4 weeks a year. I'm seeing more and more American's yapping about not having aircon in Europe. I assume they're mostly the kind that has never been to Europe
Meanwhile ~40 (mostly young) people drowned in France recently trying to cool off as temperatures exceeded 100F around Paris.
It's true that historically Europe is cooler than similar latitudes in North America. But there's also an anti-AC movement in Europe based partly on environmentalism, partly on reflexive anti-Americanism, and partly due to a general preference for "naturalness"/suspicion of anything new.
It's very Americentrist to assume anyone ever thinks of "Americans" when deciding their home improvements and expenses.
Most of Europe only sees occasional heatwaves (for now) so it's a compromise to suffer some heat briefly but save money and effort on the AC installation. Those who can, time their vacation to overlap with much of the peak heat.
I think this slowly changes but it's driven by need (longer and hotter heatwaves), affordability, local regulation, not by thinking of "Americans". Not even US Americans.
I don't assume it; it's simply true. Educated/elite Europeans tend to define themselves in opposition to Americans. It's pretty hard to interact with those Europeans (including on this site) and not pick up on that.
There are plenty of Americans who side with the Europeans and also define themselves in opposition to "the kind of American" who has AC/eats fast food/is obese/has no culture. I'm from New England and maybe even a majority of people have that perspective.
> It's true that historically Europe is cooler than similar latitudes in North America. But there's also an anti-AC movement in Europe based partly on environmentalism, partly on reflexive anti-Americanism, and partly due to a general preference for "naturalness"/suspicion of anything new.
This is complete speculation from your part.
You're being too generous. It's not "speculation", it complete bullshit.
That part might be speculation, okay, so then let's add the number of people, European citizens, dying of overheating every year (lately at least). The history is history, while the current world is so much hotter. It doesn't matter whether you deny climate change models, reality is that France just had their hottest day ever recorded, and such records get broken year after year. I've seen yesterday a picture of a Madrid bus station showing +51°C. So, if there's a better solution than AC for the affected persons I'd be very happy to hear it.
Why did you stop just short of proving that Europeans reject ACs because of "reflexive anti-Americanism"? Because that's the only thing GP objected to.
> I assume they're mostly the kind that has never been to Europe
The big disconnect comes from the fact that places like Miami and Houston don't really have analogous European peers in terms of climate. There are places that come close but it's not the same.
It's one thing for it to be unbearably hot at 2-6pm. Its a different thing altogether for it to still be 80F+ at 3am every single night for months on end. You cannot escape the heat in Houston without phase change cooling technology. Latent heat removal is what most of us are paying for around here (water out of the air). Not sensible heat removal.
I can walk down my street and find 2-3k sqft sqft homes that have 5+ tons of HVAC capacity. There is a home with three condensing units and it's not much bigger than mine (I only have a single 3 ton system). I've been thinking about getting a multizone ductless installed on top of my central unit to deal with July and August.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/weather-news/articles/worst-ive-e...
You can add AC systems in the attics and then run the piping inside the building. You keep the facade as it is.
I guess it depends on the country, customs and other things. In my part of Europe, older people are convinced the AC will kill them if they use it. So YMMV.
You can indeed. But then you lose significant space internally and not to mention the noise. Of course, better than having nothing. However, space in these houses comes at a premium as well.
You don't need a lot of space for effective AC.
I live in Prague and seeing the temperatures expected during weekend, I bought at least the portable AC. I'd say 2-4 weeks is quite a long period to justify this purchase.
Yes, historically, the AC didn't make sense in Prague, but there's no going back, the world is just going to get hotter.
Never cross a river 4-feet deep on average. A heatstroke may not let you see how cooler the rest of the year may be.
If you count that one weird day in March, there have been 9 days so far this year where the temperature has been above 28C I live in central Europe as well. It's only June... You'll have 39C on Sunday.
Using 28C as a threshold since temperatures at or above start to affect sleep.
This might be the coldest summer for the rest of your life. European summers are only going to get hotter, and more humid. Meanwhile, we have a pressing need to decarbonize our home heating solutions both for energy sovreignty and climate reasons.
Modern air-to-air heat pumps (i.e. aircon) are a pretty good solution for that. I think we're just going to have to work our way around this as a society. While many Europeans live in historic buildings that will require a lot more care, most do not, and installing aircon at least for homes with elederly people and young children provably will reduce unnecessary deaths during our now yearly heatwaves.
Air-conditioners are heat pumps and everyone should be using heat pumps
Good luck convincing old building protection pressure groups about it (yes, around here these people are real and have power). Not to mention the bureau actually in charge of landmark protection (in some areas everything is a landmark).
Portable AC units are pretty universally allowed where I live in Austria. The mini split units are also allowed, but I've seen some folks get letters about these specifically.
The climate situation will only get worse. That “2-4 weeks” number will continue to grow. At some point you will need AC to survive but if that transition doesn’t start happening now the electrical system won’t be able to tolerate the load.
I've lived in Prague for 5 years. Top apartments in buildings (most have 5-6 storeys in the center) are hardly livable during summer (not even during proper heat waves) without AC, reconstructed or not. I've been to few, folks slept on balconies if AC was not present. Woken up by 5am traffic of course. The whole city center is a mess of stone and concrete/tarmac, it heats up and stays too warm deep into each night.
I don't get this extremism, neither no AC or AC full blast freezing the room. We have ours set to mild spin aiming for 20C, it drops temperature in the room cca 4-5 degrees down compared to no AC. Still 25, very pleasant while outside 35 in shade, especially for small kids.
The surprising discourse and amount of care for European air conditioning by our American brothers this year is so sudden and sharp it feels synthetic.
The Economist is not an American publication though.
You don't think it has to do with all the dying from a heatwave going on there?
Most airconditioning is supplied by Asian manufacturers anyway. Not sure what is in it for big USA. Other than a general increase in consumption.
I am from northern part of the US. 30+ years ago there was a 2-week convention in Tulsa OK in June. I volunteered to work there.
I thought I was going to melt, and everyone from the North suffered. Few passed out due to the heat. I asked people from Tulsa "is this heat normal for June". They said "No, it does not get hot until August". I had no idea what to say.
I will never when go south again and will only go in Jan of Feb if I have to go.
So in the South, I would have to live in a freezer in the summer. A/C is required down there.
We have a major continental war raging on for years here with combined casualties of well over a million people. Which you're adamant is none of your business. So no, I don't think so.
Quick, somebody sent them American brothers and sisters some of those Covid era Chinese bodybag scaremongering videos, dubbing it „EurOpOoRs dying from heatwave“
It's synthetic even when it doesn't feel so. If an article features a product of any kind, no matter if it's brand-specific or not, and the article isn't a blog post, then it's a pretty safe bet it's a paid advertisement. It's hard not to notice once you start seeing it.
This one is particularly on the nose about Europeans not buying enough air conditioners, though. What with the normative headline phrasing that calls out Europeans specifically (who are infamous for their stubbornness against American consumerism!). I can usually appreciate the subtlety in these articles[0], but this one's about as subtle as a brick to the face.
0: https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
As a European living in a central European city that is way too hot these days: The central air conditioning system we bought when remodelling five years ago was the best investment of my life.
As a Dutch person who is from the Caribbean, we definitely love the air-conditioner down here. Especially since they all are "inverter" technology, doesn't use as much energy as before.
They also love them on the mainland but nobody loves the hassle of getting one installed.
It's also insurance related. Houses are insured based on also their insulation. Try making a hole in that insulation for an a/c without 'gezeik' as we say.
When I lived there I had a portable mini split unit. I ran that baby constantly during heatwaves. Blew every single-hose portable AC unit away.
The building I live in is like a fortress - all cement construction, another outer layer of stressed concrete panels, triple pane windows... very well-insulated. We have a ground temp heat exchanger its floor heating/cooling which has been more than adequate during this heatwave.
Its incredible how much better Italian houses/cities feel at 30C(86F) compared to e.g. German houses/cities at 30C.
While the adaption of solar + air-conditioners (better: reversible heat-pumps) will be a good thing, I hope the local/conventional methods to deal with heat are not forgotten.
It is because of insulation and lack of sun-mitigating apparatus (like awnings). Buildings with lots of insulation absorb heat all through the day and release it slowly at night.
I already love our airconditioning. The only downside is how quickly we became used to the luxury. But being to make our house liveable during this heatwave and be able to have friends and family and friends of the kids over as a refuge is a blessing.
The only regret I have is that this house only has mechanical ventilation (blowing waste air out and sucking in air through vents above the windows) instead of balanced air. That would have made it possible to have an even climate through the house. As it is, only the three rooms with a unit in it are fresh. We fill two large buckets with the water from the airconditioning and use it to water the plants in the evening.
I don’t understand the obsession the Americans have with claiming that we hate AC. Europe is not a country. There are countries where AC is more used. Here in Spain it’s common. It’s probably less common in other, less hot countries. Besides heat, countries with a lower GDP probably have less ACs installed than richer countries. So probably France have more AC-per-capita than Moldova, my guess is that something similar happens if you compare California with Mississippi. It depends. We have nothing against AC as a technology.
> Besides heat, countries with a lower GDP probably have less ACs installed than richer countries.
You couldn't be more wrong about it. A 12k BTU unit is about ~ 250-300EUR + maybe 100EUR setting it up. Building that are almost collapsing have AC. Its a thing to have AC.
> Besides heat, countries with a lower GDP probably have less ACs installed than richer countries.
I suspect that's actually not the case, because most of the richest European countries have climates where it's rarely necessary.
Mississippi, despite its much lower per capita income than California, has a much higher percentage of housing units with air conditioning (93% vs 72%). AC is now so inexpensive that whether or not a house has AC is mostly about average summer temperatures not income.
Average price of AC instalation in Spain goes from 550€ to 5000€ depending on what kind of instalation, equipment and units. Average wage is between around 1300€ net per month.
In Spain it's not cheap.
Edit. And also local towns have rules, I can't just install one that have a device on the outer wall/window and I own the whole house, in the flats you depende on the community to decide.
Even in Spain depends on the zone it can be everywhere or nowhere. In the north it's rare to find AC.
No one hates AC, it just wasn't needed.
I was in Spain last summer, in August of all times, ~30-40 C. Two of the three places I stayed at had no AC but had ceiling fans. Hot as hell for sure but that is why the siesta exists. I would go out, become exhausted from the damn heat, then go back to my room around 5PM, shower and sleep naked or only in underwear with a window open and ceiling fan running. Then awaken and go back out around 7PM. At someones house I slept in their basement which was a bit damp but cool enough to be somewhat comfortable. The last place I stayed at had AC thankfully.
If you are in the market for a portable AC I highly recommend you watch this video first:
https://youtu.be/_-mBeYC2KGc
People seem to be catching on this and some brands now offer portable mini-splits ACs, I just bought this one (waiting for it to arrive though):
https://youtu.be/D5ApvRis9X8?t=45
However they are still quite expensive.
The rapid buildout of solar, and the rise of efficient air cons for electric home heating certainly makes it seem like a much less wasteful technology than before.
I still think though that people are severly underestimating the effectiveness of relative simple, low-tech options like awnings though.
I live in sweden and I am baffled by how uncommon awnings are. In my home country window shutters that also work as yawnings are quite common, especially in places without AC.
My partner was downright insulted when I suggested getting some blackout curtains to reflect sunlight back outside when the sun is hitting our living room. I eventually won that battle after the first summer.
You can also get UV-absorbing film for the windows, though it'll make things worse in the winter.
> underestimating the effectiveness of relative simple, low-tech options like awnings though.
I mean, I'm currently in France, with 30°C (86°F) in my bedroom, do you really think that our shutters are opened ? At some point, sunlight is not even the issue. For the night to come, like the previous night, predictions are that we will have 35°C (95F) at midnight. I'm not even sure it was this hot when I was at Las Vegas eleven years ago. Las Vegas which is in the middle a of desert.
We are way past the awnings and we already have shutters and both of them are useless when the air itself is like a air dryer.
Awnings are significantly better than shutters, but they at most mitigate the heat and the temperature range they make the ambient confortable is quite limited.
I guess there is a cultural difference on the word here and I should have be more precise.
In France, shutters aren't like most American ones, here we mostly use either plain wood with no gap for light (old houses) or for most of the recent houses, we use rolling shutters that let 0% of light (and therefore, 0% of radiative energy from the sun) get to the window and will make the room entirely black. Also, most modern rolling shutters are white by default so they are pretty reflective.
In the current situation, it's the air temperature that fuck us by not getting down at night and so our (concrete) buildings accumulate the heat even at night.
An awning protrudes out of the window so airflow can still pass and light still gets into the room (just not direct light).
Even if the shutters are wood and white when sun hits them they will radiate some heat into the indoors. But of course shutters are still better than letting the sun hit your floor directly.
I didn't say anything about shutters, I said awnings. It's a testament to how much our society has forgotten about building effective homes that people think shutters are just as effective as awnings.
That said, yes, if possible, you should be installing an AC unit as well (and the awning will help make the AC unit more efficient.
We need AC in Switzerland yesterday. These last 2 weeks in Geneva have been crazy. Unfortunately with the amount of regulation on historical buildings it likely won't happen.
Can't read the article (paywalled) so I'm basing myself on what I see
> Green electricity means never having to say sorry for lowering the thermostat
I literally just read some reports yesterday day about how AC can be a pathological solution.
It's not about the energy being green or not, it's that independently of the energy source AC is a heat pump, so it pumps heat out into the air, which makes the air inside cooler, but hotter outside; and for that, green or not, it needs to put in energy to do the work, which results in _even more heat_.
At scale a.k.a cities this creates measurable bubbles of heat (+1-2degC) around AC'd places.
As Desty Nova puts it in Gunnm (a.k.a Battle Angel Alita):
Now becomes the past in an instant — and everyone will eventually die! Destiny triumphs over human knowledge and goes mad! That is the way of things! I spit upon this frail, crazed, world! I spit upon the Second Law of Thermodynamics!
> I literally just read some reports yesterday day about how AC can be a pathological solution.
That's what I have been wondering as well. When I was in Japan (which is notorious for using obscene amounts of AC), I once walked past the rear side of some buildings where all the AC vents were and you could clearly feel the heat these things are pumping into the city. How is this not creating a feedback loop?
> It's not about the energy being green or not, it's that independently of the energy source AC is a heat pump, so it pumps heat out into the air, which makes the air inside cooler, but hotter outside; and for that, green or not, it needs to put in energy to do the work, which results in _even more heat_.
What? If things would have worked as you say, we would have solved global warming in no time. Just open the windows and blow the cold air out and keep the inverter inside.
> If things would have worked as you say
They work _exactly_ as I say:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump_and_refrigeration_cy...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
> Just open the windows and blow the cold air out and keep the inverter inside
This "just" seems to hint that you don't seem to quite be grasping the concepts and scale at hand:
- Assuming perfect efficiency and unlimited free energy, where would you even put the heat from outside?
- Since energy is neither free nor unlimited, the energy needs would be enormous+
- Since it is not perfectly efficient and the energy needs are so high, the amount of wasted energy (which is heat) would be colossal, and only make the problem worse
+ The heat causing global warming comes not from human activity but from the sun, the anthropogenic effect at play is that this energy from the sun is captured by greenhouse effect.
I can't seem to be able to pass these damn captchas
If you live by the sea or on a boat, you don't need AC
We are in a modern office in Berlin with actual AC. I always joke that air conditioned offices are a bit science fiction in Germany. Most of the year the lack of AC is fine. But the summers can be hot and humid here. And today it's pretty toasty outside.
The big picture in Germany is that it needs to rethink its energy system from the ground up and it's a bit behind on that (a few decades).
People burn gas to stay warm in the winter. That gas has to be imported at great cost. It's completely stupid at this point to perpetuate that system. Stop putting gas boilers in new buildings already. That's a decision that should have been taken years ago.
Heatpumps work great and they can cool and heat. That should be the default at this point. It's not something that requires further studies or chin stroking (a national sport here in Germany, they are world champions being indecisive). This has been studied to death already.
Even if heat pumps use gas powered electricity plants, they would take a lot less gas. Because heatpumps are that effective.
From a system level point of view, mass deploying heat pumps would be an investment that should start paying off big time within 10-15 years. People think of this as cost rather than as an investment with a positive and very substantial ROI. There's a bit of an economic crisis here and a cost of living crisis. And the government is moving deck chairs around on the titanic instead of investing their way out of this as they should have started doing ages ago.
Many private home owners make this choice already of course. But on a normal sized apartment building with 20-40 apartments, the tenants have to pay through their nose for warm water and heating. There are a few million such buildings in Germany. Many buildings don't even have thermostats in their apartments (mine doesn't, built this century!!!). No smart meters either (seriously, wtf?!).
Germany needs a giant kick in the ass when it comes to their high energy bills. They are high because they are structurally doing all the wrong things and refusing to do smart, common sense things. Lots of hand wringing, not a lot of action over this.
How about applying political pressure to countries like China and India that do not care about emissions control and pollution? :)
The anti global warming initiatives were killed by Unites States. Who is the major polluter.
Or america with it's insane per capita emissions.
China is at least adding more solar per year than America has in total.
Install more renewables and more heatpumps, then we can climate-control our spaces with no guilt!
It seems like such an obvious conclusion. The article says the power demand for air conditioning, even at high levels of adoption, would be a “rounding error” within overall consumption. Why suffer?
Some people are just a glutton for punishment.
True. Our building is 20 year old swiss one, mostly concrete, one would expect already good temperatures. Ground floor and first one are fine even now (26 is max it gets), but floor under roof is much warmer. 28 and more and I can't work mentally much, sweat just sitting, showers work for few mins. No AC would make it unbearable to WFH for example.
Ventilation during night is almost useless, there is no breeze these days the air is perfectly still. Open windows through the building and air doesn't change, just insects come.
Now typical proper 2-part ACs are forbidden here for residential buildings, and monolithic ones are not that effective. We bought a mix of this from midea last year - 2 parts, permanently connected by hose, and we put it out when needed and cover door to balcony. easily 25 max under roof at low rpms, so far so good (outside easily 35 in shade, >42C on balcony in afternoon/evening). Proper permanently installed 2 part AC would save some energy since we lose some cold via smaller gaps in door, but its frequent these well-meaning moves end up doing more damage than intended.
Air conditioning is just a heat pump, so in a scenario in which all the indoor spaces are cooled, the outside temperature will rise significantly because all that energy must go somewhere, it does not magically disappear.
So AC is making the problem worse, or just worse for all those that are forced outside.
I live in the USA. Houses around here don't have A/C. That's because until recently it wasn't needed.
I mean in Mediterranean AC are quite common, further north not so much because hot summer used be 1 week of temperatures +30 deg C which would mean that buying AC effectively for 1 week per year makes no sense.
However if we will start talking about a month or several months of hot weather, people will buy them kind of automatically.
The rate the world is going, even people on the Arctic Circle will need A/C.
Where I grew up and live in the US, I had no real need for A/C until 4 or 5 years ago, a bedroom window fan was fine for the few real hot days. Now, I need A/C, but I have aged too :)
Over the years, hot days are getting far more common and hotter on ave. In the "old days" (tm) we could go all summer without reaching above 90F (32C). Once in a great while it would get above 90.
And as a kid (5+ decades ago) I remember me and my friends getting real excited when one day was suppose to reach 100F (38C). We spent all day checking the thermometer at my grandmother's house and when it hit 100, we celebrated.
Now, 100 is just a ho-hum day :(
>The rate the world is going, even people on the Arctic Circle will need A/C.
You're way too optimistic. At the rate the world is going they'll get it 30yr before they need it as the side effect of some highly engineered compliance solution to half baked environmental policy that pretends to be about heat pumps but was ghost written by a think tank owned by an HVAC billionare.
The article is all over the place. I thought the point will be about using your home as a "battery" to store what your panels produce during the day in the form of cool air. But I think the punchline is already in the first paragraph:
> Yanks holidaying in Europe expect cool comfort, and grow surly on finding that many old-world buildings require them to sweat and bear it.
And there's of course the ever present AI driver because where would we be if we don't get our priorities straight:
> It must ... expand its data centres, dwarfed by America’s, lest the artificial-intelligence revolution render it a vassal.
The rest of the article meanders through historical considerations, family wealth, home sizes, geopolitical issues, traditions, etc. None of which explain or justify the premise of the title, some even contradict it. Expanding AI DC goes head to head with "wasting" energy on cooling houses more. It's comfortable to lower the temp a bit in summer but all the arguments in the article are that the energy would be better used elsewhere. Industry, AI, etc.
The bottom like will always be that for any given production/storage capacity everything is a 0 sum game. I can use it to cool houses, or store it/use it for something more productive. The article does a bad job explaining why "cool the house" would trump other considerations when they compete for the same energy.
I just love how Europe became American vassals the moment they refused to do what America wants.
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It is still hot even with air-conditioning.
Need to size them properly for the area they’re going to cool.
How about learning to love fans?
Imho ac is only really needed for sleeping.
This. Having survived dozens of mediterranean village summers without A/C, I am genuinely puzzled how it came to be considered a necessity. Is it "modern" construction methods that turned buildings into heat batteries? So, it became a necessity in the cities, and then spread everywhere because we became spoiled and our collective tolerance to heat dropped?
Depends on where you are, obvs.
As an American living in Austria, I find this conversation really tiring. Common arguments against AC are urban heat and CO2 emissions. Living in a city where 80% of residential electricity comes from hydropower, the emissions argument seems a bit moot.
For urban heat zones, AC seems to be criticized in isolation. There's never a mention of a lack of tree canopy in vast parts of the city, or that reflective pavements and green roofs are nonexistent.
I think a real barrier is that we're not allowed to install compressors on building facades. I don't disagree with this; it just means that most folks living here are stuck buying portable AC units, which are inefficient unless you do some considerable DIY to make them dual-hose.
> For urban heat zones, AC seems to be criticized in isolation. There's never a mention of a lack of tree canopy in vast parts of the city, or that reflective pavements and green roofs are nonexistent.
I totally agree on the importance of trees, reflective pavements, green roofs, etc.
However, pretty much everybody who is critical of AC would also support the things you've listed. Is your complaint that people do not talk enough about it? That's not really my experience.
I have the feeling that widespread use of AC would make it even harder to make these changes. At the very least, these things must go hand in hand.
> Living in a city where 80% of residential electricity comes from hydropower, the emissions argument seems a bit moot.
In an interconnected grid (most of europe) clean power capacity that is not used locally can be sold off to places that have less clean power capacity. This argument only works if all of europe was mostly renewable energy.
But I mean, heat-pump AC is quite efficient as long as you are not making your home frigid year-around I don't see that as a big argument. Govs would be better served by providing good heat-pump regulations and pre-approved installations for residential builds and banning those incredible ineficient portable ACs.
I was referring more to everyday discourse rather than city initiatives. Apologies for the confusion.
And my criticism is mainly of the city in its current form. I'm appreciative of the efforts from the city, but walking around Neubau, it's hard to describe it as anything other than a concrete jungle.