Despite exposure to A/C during the World Cup and the consequent social media coverage about air conditioning in North America, it's just never going to take off. (With regard to Europe in general, not just the UK.) Too much of a cultural difference is lurking behind the issue, and the electrical infrastructure, urban design and architecture, and climate mitigation concerns among locals just aren't oriented toward accommodating it pervasively.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
How the UK's extreme heat is shifting the conversation about air-con
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5dw4plzvlo
EXCERPTS: Across the UK, solid brick homes like theirs quietly absorb heat the way they have for decades. Charged-up walls radiate warmth back into rooms that never get the chance to cool. [...] As Britain enters a new kind of summer, with homes built to trap warmth and heatwaves intensifying, two questions loom: should we embrace air conditioning despite its costs and consequences, and how much should we spend on adapting homes versus cutting carbon?
[...] One of the most controversial ideas in the report is on air conditioning. Right now, only 5% or so of English homes have a cooling unit. The Committee recommends fitting these devices in hospitals and care homes within 10 years, and schools in 25 years. This goes against years of government advice that passive cooling was the preferred method - using shade, ventilation and other design features to bring down temperatures, not mechanical means.
[...] Santamouris is scathing about who is driving the air con demand - the industry, he says, is "extremely powerful" - adding that passive cooling adds its own economic growth, as money is spent on plumbers and builders. Against him stand those who think Britain's hostility to cooling has curdled into a type of masochism.
[...] Since April, in England and Wales the Boiler Upgrade Scheme has offered £2,500 towards a reversible air-air heat pump: a machine that warms a home in winter and cools it in summer. ... Such has been the silence around this grant, that in its first month only around 45 households claimed it. By comparison, the numbers claiming a heating-only model ran into the thousands.
[...] Air conditioning doesn't destroy heat, it moves it - out of the flat and into the street, where, Santamouris says, it warms the air your neighbours breathe and drives up the demand for still more cooling, by about a third in his studies of Sydney. The machines keeping the financially comfortable cool make everyone else's nights worse; and as wealthier households cool their rooms, the rest fall further behind. A thermal divide, opening street by street. And it lands on the electricity grid at the worst possible moment...
[...] The heat of this year and last, and the prospects of it being repeated, is a future Jo Shields is upset by. "It's our survival," she says. Most days, she tries to bury the thought of it - "because otherwise it terrifies me." (MORE - details)
_
- - - - - - - - - - - -
How the UK's extreme heat is shifting the conversation about air-con
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5dw4plzvlo
EXCERPTS: Across the UK, solid brick homes like theirs quietly absorb heat the way they have for decades. Charged-up walls radiate warmth back into rooms that never get the chance to cool. [...] As Britain enters a new kind of summer, with homes built to trap warmth and heatwaves intensifying, two questions loom: should we embrace air conditioning despite its costs and consequences, and how much should we spend on adapting homes versus cutting carbon?
[...] One of the most controversial ideas in the report is on air conditioning. Right now, only 5% or so of English homes have a cooling unit. The Committee recommends fitting these devices in hospitals and care homes within 10 years, and schools in 25 years. This goes against years of government advice that passive cooling was the preferred method - using shade, ventilation and other design features to bring down temperatures, not mechanical means.
[...] Santamouris is scathing about who is driving the air con demand - the industry, he says, is "extremely powerful" - adding that passive cooling adds its own economic growth, as money is spent on plumbers and builders. Against him stand those who think Britain's hostility to cooling has curdled into a type of masochism.
[...] Since April, in England and Wales the Boiler Upgrade Scheme has offered £2,500 towards a reversible air-air heat pump: a machine that warms a home in winter and cools it in summer. ... Such has been the silence around this grant, that in its first month only around 45 households claimed it. By comparison, the numbers claiming a heating-only model ran into the thousands.
[...] Air conditioning doesn't destroy heat, it moves it - out of the flat and into the street, where, Santamouris says, it warms the air your neighbours breathe and drives up the demand for still more cooling, by about a third in his studies of Sydney. The machines keeping the financially comfortable cool make everyone else's nights worse; and as wealthier households cool their rooms, the rest fall further behind. A thermal divide, opening street by street. And it lands on the electricity grid at the worst possible moment...
[...] The heat of this year and last, and the prospects of it being repeated, is a future Jo Shields is upset by. "It's our survival," she says. Most days, she tries to bury the thought of it - "because otherwise it terrifies me." (MORE - details)
_
