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Europeans should learn to love the air-conditioner
- Kaibeezy 3mo agohttps://archive.ph/r1i8k https://archive.ph/r1i8k
- shevy-java 3mo agoIt is still hot even with air-conditioning.
- Naveja 3mo agoneed 2 full blast
- loloquwowndueo 3mo agoNeed to size them properly for the area they’re going to cool.
- tim-projects 3mo agoHow about learning to love fans? Imho ac is only really needed for sleeping.
- lezojeda 3mo ago[dead]
- ubermonkey 3mo agoDepends on where you are, obvs.
- m000 3mo agoThis. 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?
- orwin 3mo agoLast night, or rather this morning, the temperature reached it's lowest at 5 AM: 28C. When I woke up two hours later we had 33, and when I started working at 9, 38. The thermometer then reached 43 at noon, where it it still stuck 4 hours 45 minutes later, despite the rising humidity (I live by the sea), making the humidex reach 51. The temperature won't be below 34 before midnight, and might be below 30 at 5AM tomorrow morning.
- Scroll_Swe 3mo agoAlright. Here in Sweden I had 27C MAX. Totally doable Looks like it will top out at that. We have had plenty 30C+ weather. Costal helps. The elite.
- varjag 3mo ago[flagged]
- sgerenser 3mo agoThe Economist is not an American publication though.
- alserio 3mo agoFor what i see, these us vs europe thigs have spiked recently, who'll benefit from it?
- FergusArgyll 3mo agoBig Air Conditioner
- daveguy 3mo agoYou don't think it has to do with all the dying from a heatwave going on there?
- varjag 3mo agoWe 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.
- daveguy 3mo ago*half of the maga trump shits are adamant. In case you haven't noticed, they are waning fast.
- varjag 3mo agoYou have a point but the way I see it they can't be an insignificant minority. That this is a proudly pursued official policy has one corollary: there are no perceived electoral consequences to the vice president, senators and representatives for this among their voters. The ACs for us Europoors is however another matter.
- Kaliboy 3mo agoAs 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.
- kakacik 3mo agoTrue. 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.
- sgerenser 3mo agoInteresting, I knew most of Europe wasn’t very big on AC, but I didn’t know permanent residential installations were practically banned in (at least some parts of) Switzerland: https://lenews.ch/2026/05/29/the-politics-of-air-conditioning-in-switzerland/ https://lenews.ch/2026/05/29/the-politics-of-air-conditionin...
- r0ckarong 3mo ago[dead]
- MisterTea 3mo agoI 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.
- aestetix 3mo agoHow about applying political pressure to countries like China and India that do not care about emissions control and pollution? :)
- watwut 3mo agoThe anti global warming initiatives were killed by Unites States. Who is the major polluter.
- Hikikomori 3mo agoOr america with it's insane per capita emissions. China is at least adding more solar per year than America has in total.
- random_ind_dude 3mo agoNon-fossil fuels make up 50% of India's installed power capacity. This year's peak power demand was 270GW, out of which 34% was supplied by renewables. The percentage of renewables in India's energy mix is going up every year, and there is no aversion to nuclear. Still, thermal power plants using coal remain a significant source of energy, and new coal plants are being planned and built. So India does care about emissions, but it also cares about energy security.
- eigenspace 3mo agoThe 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.
- DanielHB 3mo agoI 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.
- stavros 3mo agoYou can also get UV-absorbing film for the windows, though it'll make things worse in the winter.
- pjerem 3mo ago> 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.
- DanielHB 3mo agoAwnings are significantly better than shutters, but they at most mitigate the heat and the temperature range they make the ambient confortable is quite limited.
- close04 3mo agoThe 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.
- watwut 3mo agoI just love how Europe became American vassals the moment they refused to do what America wants.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- labadi 3mo agoAs 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.
- whilenot-dev 3mo ago> 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. Can you expand on this? Because it feels like greening is always a pressing topic for any architect working here[0][1]. [0]: https://gruenstattgrau.at/news/ https://gruenstattgrau.at/news/ [1]: https://www.wien.gv.at/spezial/klimafahrplan/klimaanpassung-wien-wird-klimaresilient/offentlicher-raum-and-gebaude/ https://www.wien.gv.at/spezial/klimafahrplan/klimaanpassung-...
- labadi 3mo agoI 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.
- whilenot-dev 3mo agoI mean Neubau (1070) is the concrete jungle in central Vienna. I don't now how that district can be so popular tbh.
- DanielHB 3mo ago> 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.
- invalidusernam3 3mo agoWhy 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
- mavhc 3mo agoAir-conditioners are heat pumps and everyone should be using heat pumps
- clarionbell 3mo agoGood 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).
- labadi 3mo agoPortable 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.
- orwin 3mo agoUnless you have split mobile AC portable units are very inefficient. Tbh even in old buildings it might be possible to reabilitate old chimneys for AC (or rather heat pumps).
- throw1234567891 3mo agoMake Past Great Again.
- gmuslera 3mo ago
- spockz 3mo agoI 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.
- telesilla 3mo agoThank you for using the water responsibly! Nothing I hate more than being dripped on while walking around the city from AC unit pipes hanging out the window.
- user01815-2 3mo agoAs 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.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- carlosrg 3mo agoI 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.
- Kaibeezy 3mo agoThe Economist is British
- cholantesh 3mo agoThey don't have bylines, though, so individual authors could be of different nationalities.
- ExoticPearTree 3mo ago> 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.
- sgerenser 3mo agoMississippi, 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.
- FullMetalBitch 3mo agoAverage 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.
- jmclnx 3mo agoThe 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 :(
- cucumber3732842 3mo ago>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.
- dboreham 3mo agoI live in the USA. Houses around here don't have A/C. That's because until recently it wasn't needed.
- Sweepi 3mo agoIts 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.
- DanielHB 3mo agoIt 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.
- lloeki 3mo agoCan'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!
- Kaibeezy 3mo agoArchive link is below
- lloeki 3mo agoI can't seem to be able to pass these damn captchas
- spacechild1 3mo ago> 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?
- ExoticPearTree 3mo ago> 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.
- DanielHB 3mo agoIf you are in the market for a portable AC I highly recommend you watch this video first: https://youtu.be/_-mBeYC2KGc 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 https://youtu.be/D5ApvRis9X8?t=45 However they are still quite expensive.
- PashaGo 3mo agoIf you live by the sea or on a boat, you don't need AC
- orwin 3mo agoI live by the sea, it was 28C last night, will be 30C tonight, I absolutely need AC. Sadly I have to get a mobile AC unit, which are the worst, but well :/
- stavros 3mo agoInstall more renewables and more heatpumps, then we can climate-control our spaces with no guilt!
- Kaibeezy 3mo agoIt 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?
- ExoticPearTree 3mo agoSome people are just a glutton for punishment.
- mamonster 3mo agoWe 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.
- jillesvangurp 3mo agoWe 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.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- thefz 3mo agoAir 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.
- comrade1234 3mo agoThe 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.
- general1465 3mo agoI 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.
- redwood 3mo agoHumidity is the ultimate cause for the need of air conditioning. I don't believe European humidity levels approach levels in which a fan is not reasonable to cool off
- ritcgab 3mo agoI wonder why the apartment buildings in the US never have mini splits but always use PTACs or window units. In my opinion, they suck.
- ohm 3mo agoAnd US should learn to love mini split AC instead of the wall and window ones.
- aa-jv 3mo agoAustralian, living in central Europe (have lived in California, also) .. this isn't hot, mate. Also, AC is for wimps. Americans just like to shit on Europeans for trivial/nonsense things because it detracts from the heinous crimes the USA commits every day - which Americans don't really see, but the rest of the world does. Its cute that Americans think Europeans don't want AC because Americans have AC. Europeans don't want war and genocide - Americans have plenty of that.
- aragilar 3mo agoPersonally, I think AC vs. no AC isn't the issue, it's the lack of fans and air circulation that is the problem. I suspect there are building where installing AC is going to be required, but the majority of building really just need to install fans.