I tend to stay away from topics like this which generalize and basically tell a whole continent they are living their lives "wrongly".
But I have to say, AC is not "banned" anywhere in Europe, apart from certain cantons of Switzerland. In Germany you have a right to AC actually, if your community votes to "veto" the installation a court can overturn that.
> But I have to say, AC is not "banned" anywhere in Europe
Exactly, the whole premise of the article is a bit of a strawman. In fact, where I live, the demand for AC installation is so high that you have to wait months for a company to install a unit for you.
These extreme heat waves are a fairly new phenomenon, summers in central Europe just didn't use to get so hot for such a long stretch of time even a few decades ago. Now that they've become the way they are, people are doing what? Correct, installing AC units. Imagine that.
But let's not forget that energy is also on average a lot more expensive in Europe than in the US. The cost plus environmental concerns, which seem to fair less high in the public conscience on the other side of the Atlantic, have also been reasons why people were not keen on AC units in the past.
It’s not banned, but getting permission to install the outside unit is essentially “hard” in some parts of Europe.
In England, if you own a house, you generally have permitted development rights to install one, subject to some fairly common-sense rules. If you live in a flat, though, it’s a very different story: you will need planning permission *as well as* freeholder consent, and the process generally involves engineering/structural/architect drawings and freehold-consent paperwork. The freeholder can also charge you their legal and administration costs, even if they ultimately reject the application. Essentially it's >5K of paperwork which might be wasted if it's rejected even just to install a single 5KW split.
So in the hottest parts of London and other major cities, where a large proportion of people live in flats, installing AC can be very difficult in practice. In the cooler commuter towns, where houses are much more common, it’s considerably easier.
Why can't they build it into new flat blocks/houses? Nothing outright prevents it but everyone does their best to discourage it. The London Plan, for example, uses a “cooling hierarchy” which 'seeks to reduce any potential overheating and also the need to cool a building through active cooling measures' so good luck getting planning for it.
To be fair, the article doesn't say that AC is banned - it mostly focuses on the HOA-style local ordinances and permits that discourage people from using AC.
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We have those stupid regulations in Finland about how the outside of our apartments buildings should look - meaning you cannot put the condenser visibly on the outside of the building. I've heard stories of residents being scalded for putting flowers on their balcony railings that face outwards as it ruins the "look". Given almost all apartment buildings are built consistently between every floor they could ensure consistent placement of condensers across all floors and it wouldn't even look that bad.
What makes the situation much worse here is we have insanely good insulation on the buildings. They trap heat for the cold winters, but the walls just maintain all the heat during the summers. A new approach is needed to make it livable here.
In my own apartment I am not able to create a cross-breeze through strategic window opening to try and bring in cooler air from outside, so I've resorted to opening a window on one side of the apartment and using a Vornado fan to push air out the window on another side of the apartment - creating a pressurized system.
You say stupid, but I actually would find it sad to see beautiful buildings that are in many cases hundreds of years old defaced with loads of small condensers bolted on to the face.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't have A/C but rather all flats use one system with a large roof condenser, or where that is not possible district cooling or ground source.
I think you misunderstand what isolation does. It will also keep the heat out. Having window awnings to block sunlight from directly warming up the room will go a long way.
> We have those stupid regulations in Finland about how the outside of our apartments buildings should look - meaning you cannot put the condenser visibly on the outside of the building.
Same for Germany, at least in many places. And if your building gets reclassified as being under Denkmalschutz (cultural heritage management) you've won in the Lottery of Pain.
While I hear you, I think AC is better centralized for the building, along with heat and water.
Yes, there are numerous reasons why this is harder to do than just doing it ad-hoc per apartment, but if we’re to see it as infrastructure, it should receive the same level of consideration as other utilities.
Agreed, new builds should be mandatory, but this is not easy to retrofit to existing apartment buildings in a country where labour and parts are notoriously expensive and have to be split with the residents.
For most of the buildings from communism era - all the utilities run through the apartments anyway and there is absolutely no place or way to retrofit these utilities without extensively either re-doing it from scratch, or trying to somehow retrofit it on the outside.
All of these options are a non-starter considering basic AC starts from $500. Why should anyone invest more than that?
Many communist-era buildings had a service shaft the width of the back wall of the toilet closet (yes, bathroom and toilet are separate rooms). This was hidden from everyday view with large cabinet doors.
A national-scale project can likely package cooling for these shafts, possibly emanating from rooftop units.
You can install one on the balcony below the railing level.
The housing company is responsible for the exterior surfaces and thus also responsible for whatever happens to fall on bystanders when it will inevitably happen.
AC installers are also notoriously bad at following placement guidelines.
Doesn't matter what it looks like, problem is it changes the facade. For that you need to submit some paperwork and get it approved.
You can actually install a heat pump in most apartment buildings, as long as it's on the balcony and not visible from the street (=below waist-level). Main reason you wouldn't, is condensate output which has to be piped indoors or into a heated drain during the winter. Or you just pipe it into your balcony's rainwater drain and accept that you can't use the heatpump below 0C.
Sometimes it's not about the fence, it's about exerting power. Put people in charge of the decision that shouldn't be there, and you're in world of pain.
While at an outdoor event this year on a very hot day early in the season - before my body had time to adapt to the summer heat - I got a warning from my Apple Watch that my heart was elevated even though I didn’t appear to be moving. My heart was up over 120 BPM just standing around.
I went to my car, turned on the AC, and drank some water. My heart rate went back to normal, but it was pretty unnerving.
The scarier thing was this was a youth sports tournament. These kids are playing all-day tournaments in 33C+ heat (and sometimes 36C+) for a solid two months of the year. While they may cope with the heat better than I do, I worry it’s only a matter of time before tragedy strikes.
That being said, this year I am making an effort to rely less on AC and do some moderate exercise in the heat to increase my tolerance.
Right now in my city it's 30c, with 79% humidity, and real feel is 41c, and it's late evening. And, next year it's probably going to be worse. I can see things going really bad for health compromised people pretty soon.
And, we have a flaky electricity, without enough focus or renewables, so, because of war(money)games in the middle east we have a huge gas crisis, and having one/two hours of load-shading every day.
So, tell me, what are we going to do when we can't run the freaking AC, because our power grid failed?
This is encouraging curing the symptoms, not the true problem.
And, the more AC we use, it will increase the ambient temp. And more people uses AC, the more the temp grows. How long we are going to keep doing this? it sounds like another corporate drama to put it on us, the general people instead of solving the issue they create. Heat increased, use AC, it's not a luxury, but we are not going to stop destroying environment.
> This ailment is mysteriously absent from the United States, where indoor temperatures are often kept at around 75 degrees even when it’s 100 degrees outside
If having a high temperature delta was a concern everyone in Texas would be dead by now.
I set my thermostat to 65F in August. My house is at 67F right now and it's 81F outside (at 7AM). We're still catching up from yesterday. I don't see the point in allowing the condensing unit to shut off when it's this hot and humid out. You are just giving the angry super Mario sun a head start when you let it turn off in the morning. The temperature in my house will still rise to 74-75F with this unit running non stop. The forecast for today is approximately 100F.
At some point, the cost of electricity becomes constant (100% duty cycle). You can't run the air conditioner more than all the time. It makes the equipment last a lot longer when it's not being cycled every 10-15 minutes. It can be cheaper to just keep things brutally cold given the relatively affordable electric rates. $300 capacitor replacement can buy a lot of kilowatt hours in the ercot and entergy markets. Short cycling a compressor with high pressure and you could be replacing one every other year.
If any of this sounds offensive, I would invite the offended party to join me for lunch in downtown Houston or Galveston sometime this week.
> Several countries require AC installation to be approved by the equivalent of a homeowners association or impose noise ordinances that increase compliance costs and paperwork.
This is not unique to ACs. Anything on the outside of a building requires your co-owners to agree.
> HOAs don't make neighbors co-owners of your own property, do they?
Home-owner associations in Europe are frequently set up for apartment buildings, in which case, yes, the roof, foundation, hallways, stairwells, main piping, electricity, etc are all legally co-owned.
Primary purpose of HOAs is to save for & plan long-term maintenance on the entire building.
HOAs for neighbourhoods, or blocks with single-family homes or terraced houses are pretty rare in Europe.
Multi-logement buildings are not really the issue here. In the US (and outside, but less commonly, but e.g. France has them in the Alps, for the same reason) there are communities with only freestanding houses that privately own the infrastructure serving a number of houses, if I may be blunt: to make things cheaper for local councils and get housing approved, everything from roads to sewer lines.
They force homeowners to decide together (and pay for) everything from road maintenance to what noise levels are allowed.
Another issue they cause is that, of course, the homeowners living there do not just use HOAs to override the wishes of individuals, but also feel disinclined to let the local authorities ... and the locals ... operate as normal there, given that they pay for everything, sometimes literally including the roads in the area around them. These communities may have banks, parks, even beaches, and there are conflicts about who gets to go there, given the local homeowners pay for maintenance. For example, given they clean up left-behind garbage, do people from the nearby town get to play there ... and leave behind more garbage?
The root of the problem is that more housing is no longer a net positive for many communities in a great many places. The increase in taxation income does not justify the extra infrastructure in many places. This means local authorities refuse building projects unless they pay for their own infrastructure. Hence, HOAs are being forced to take over the functions that public authorities used to have ... because local authorities are forcing the responsibilities that local authorities used to have on them. Of course, then the public nature of public space goes into question.
HOAs are companies, with the owners as shareholders, who own the shared infrastructure of the owners. Things like hallways, maybe elevators, gardens, this can even include the roads in a community.
The point of HOAs is to force homeowners to CO-decide (in houses: to make things cheaper for local councils) on what happens to the shared infrastructure. What and how to spend of maintenance and what to change.
That's where the image of AC in general matters. It needs to be seen as a life saving tech just like heating, not a luxury item for rich people.
If it was just a matter of red tape it would be fine, but in France people would fight you on AC because it's ugly/noisy/warms up the street.
So you can get it rejected by people who live in a flat where heat is not as much of a problem as your (ground floor vs higher floor, window orientation) or by landlords who don't even live in the building.
Don't get me started on how it works in my country.
People who don't have a balcony are screwed and are entirely dependent on homeowners association which arbitrarily can agree or not, or they can stay indecisive about it and not let you do anything.
Well, if you have a balcony? you just put it there and make the necessary holes for it, problem solved.
The effect is exactly the same - you just have AC installed. In one case you have to go through totally unnecessary hoops, and in other case, you just do whatever you want.
It is not entirely that simple. Condensate water is potential problem if wrongly discharged. But adding sufficient drainage is not that expensive per balcony basis. So it is something that should be fixed.
In a typical mini-split, the water flows to the outside unit and exits the system there, so you either have a pump or a sufficiently sloped pipe from the inside unit to the outside unit.
edit: I guess you could route the drain pipe anywhere if you wanted, so I retract my previous statement.
You can have drain pipes installed, but you can also just collect the water in a bucket and empty it periodically. That requires no extra investment of money, just a tiny bit of your willpower and manpower, depending on the size of the bucket.
There are also systems that spray the water back at the AC unit to cool it down, this is supposed to both improve efficiency and evaporate the water so you don't have to deal with it. I am sure those have some downsides, too.
I am all for solving these problems and making sure they don't cause problems for others. My problem is with the ability for arbitrary people to say "no" to your case, without even considering the options or facts.
Sure thing, you could go to court if they have any problem, but who is going to fight for AC worth $500 for a few years just to get it installed?
Some idiot figuring out that nice hole in cladding is right place to direct it... Or people under balconies when it is not raining not wanting to have water drop on them... In many cases balconies have less than ideal designs.
Exactly. While I personaly don't have a problem with AC condensate dripping down on the street, I can see how some people might not be used to that.
Best would probably be to use the existing rainwater pipes that lead down to the sewers - all building have those. But good luck getting that past your HOA-equivalent, as that will most probably involve some modifications to the building and we can't have that, no!
Has anyone ever argued that AC is luxury? This century? Really? I believe, the division goes between harm/comfort and not luxury/necessity.
I don't have AC at home. Some think I don't install it because I somehow don't get hot in summer or cold at winter. It's the other way around. We, people, have one of the best thermoregulation systems among animals, our whole skin is essentially a huge cooling system. The only way to render it incapable is... stop using it for a prolonged amount of time. It's use it or lose it all over again.
If you don't believe me, read what ultra-marathon runners have to say. If a trained athlete can survive Badwater, almost everyone can train themselves to survive a European heatwave.
Sure, some people can't. Some need AC because of cardiovascular conditions. It's fine, let them have it. But some people can't walk because of musculoskeletal conditions, but no one would argue that a wheelchair is a necessity.
Cooling technologies are a necessity and air conditioning is one of many possible options.
Europe north of France is substantially cooler than much of the US, even on the hottest days. Many homes could get by on ceiling fans, but they are very uncommon here.
A couple of years ago that would have been correct, but circumstances have changed.
We've had a series of heat waves this summer, and temperatures have gotten very high inside. Much depends on the location of course, and the type of building, and stuff like that, but the fact is that in Belgium alone thousands of people have died because of the heat. Thousands of people that would still be with us if they would have had adequate cooling.
When it's close to 40 °C in your home, a ceiling fan is not going to make a meaningful difference.
And we need to keep in mind that summers are in all likelihood going to get hotter and hotter.
Forced air cooling require air to be colder than the heatsink surface and evaporative cooling require relative humidity to be less than 100%.
I don't know how bad the situation in Europe is, but we're already at point where there are times and places on Earth where one can construct a primal instinctive understanding of that by simply walking out of an air conditioned room(to which you SHOULD return within half an hour and MUST within an hour). "Just get fans bro" is tone deaf.
I live in Sweden. You are incorrect. Having your home basically unlivable a few weeks every year is not ok, and ground heat exchange pumps that provide cooling are energetically basically free, so just do it.
I think you underestimate how powerful ceiling fans can be. The highest temperature in Sweden this year was only 36, you would be absolutely fine with a ceiling fan unless you wanted to exercise.
That said, if you are able to get a ground source heat pump, that's awesome, but it's something like 10x to 20x the price of even a really good ceiling fan.
Ceiling (or for that matter any) fans work on your own evaporation. So unless you accept unacceptable levels of humidity or acclimatized to much hotter climate than Sweden and are there for a short time they are not a solution.
Ground source is overhyped and overpriced. District heating and air-exchange AC is still the winning solution.
Run on solar (sun usually shines when it's hot) and use geothermic energy. The ground below your house is significantly cooler than the surrounding air.
I'd still favour the fan, I've lived in India for longer periods with consistently around 32-36 C and a fan is perfectly enough after a little while of adapting.
They have very good thermal coeffiency: ground source heat pumps will typically generate 3-6kWh of thermal energy from 1kWh of electricity. By reversing the flow you can also use ground source heat pumps for cooling as well.
Doesn't sound like "basically free" to me... It still uses electricity, which doesn't help with climate change (even if it mostly comes from renewables).
Hard to see how you can read what GP said as anything other than "basically free", and failing to quantify, like you are doing here, and just categorically calling all electricity use bad is not coherent or helpful either.
More or less the only people who can do that in Europe are rich people with detached homes in the suburbs, which is a vanishingly small minority. European governments could do a lot more to invest in photovoltaics, but it's a bit complicated with how cramped the continent is.
You can replace farmland, but that seems like a really bad idea with Globalism's decline. Who knows what's going to happen to the food supply chain over the next 30 years. The only other option is attaching them to the exterior of historic buildings, and heaven forbid! Think about the character of the neighborhood!
Ceiling fans are extremely efficient, and they also improve enormously the efficiency of AC - by reducing by several degrees the amount of cooling to reach a comfortable level.
Ceiling fans should be installed before any AC.
If you are not convinced, there is a one-hour video by Technology Connections on YouTube that will argue the point more in-depth that anything I could write here.
Sweden has a 'district cooling' as well as district heating. 2 completely different systems ofcourse. The district cooling is a centralized way of providing cold air/liquid to building and facilities across the city. The centralized producer of the cold stuff, they can also create the chilly stuff by utilizing waste heat from factories, large buildings etc.
Pretty neat idea IMO, and something that ideally would be in priority instead of letting each building have their own AC and create a lot of noise.
The problem with monopolies is that they can hike prices at will. This has certainly happened with district heating in Sweden. You can't do that with AC and solar.
You might be surprised how far you can get with a simple fan. What your body needs is to evaporate heat. You sweat, it evaporates, skin cools down. Airflow helps that process a whole bunch. It's physics. It may not make hot weather feel perfect but it will cover the necessity pretty much anywhere.
Same goes for tree shade and sensible city planning, also architecture (see all those textured dark grey or black condos currently in fashion and shudder). The other day I was biking along a road after dark and residual heat around it is so noticeable, biking 5 meters closer to the trees it felt so much colder.
I've spent some time in SE Asia. Many homes out there don't have an A/C. Apparently the real number is like 85%.
Should air conditioning maybe be less regulated in Europe? Sure. Do I enjoy A/C on occasion? Sure, guilty. Is climate change real? Sure. But A/C is a necessity like water/sewage/electricity? In Europe?? Idk.
Edit: I agree in advance with everyone saying it sucks without AC but just saying, a strategic fan (and opening windows if possible, closing curtains, etc) can be OP. It might sound stupid but for years I literally forgot fans existed because I was where everywhere is AC and often no fan. Just try it...
Edit 2: I think if you're in a hot AND especially humid place (probably not EU) I'm not sure if I'd take AC or dehumidifier
I think you're under-estimating how hot it gets inside well-insulated European homes. Your mileage may vary across European countries, but in the north where it gets cold in the winter our homes are built to trap heat. Opening windows won't get you very far as the temperature radiates through the windows and traps in the walls. Closing blinds will help, but not by much. It got over 40c in my office this summer. This is not livable conditions with a fan.
When it's around 20C, it's impossible for me to make my rooms colder than say 23C, because there is no way I can make so much of air exchange.
Even if I somehow manage to pull the air in, the moment I close it - the walls that have all that heat will start giving it back again, bringing the temperature back to where it was.
It's so funny, that when the winter starts, it's long into the winter before I have to turn on heating in my apartment.
I am from an SE-Asian country, AC usage has increased a lot, and, also we are hell bent on devastating every green that is available, as much as possible.
Portable one's heat dispenser is inside your room, AC unit's outside. But the issue being, as it disperses the heat outside, it's probably still increasing the ambient heat?
The problem is when humidity rises it makes it harder forbthe body to expel hear via evaporation. This is what is happening in places like UK this time around. An AC helps get rid of the humidity as it cools the air. I don't know about necessity now but 20 years down the line, who knows
Cooling the air by definition raises the humidity :-)
Dehumidifier mode in AC works by cooling the air below the dew point, removing the condensation, then warming the air up (either by itself or literally heating it up)
But for dehumidifier in AC, the heat is dispensed through the outdoor unit, so end result actually cools the house. I use our AC in dehumidifier mode, also, as I understand it has less power consumption (please correct me if I am wrong). In my experience, it cools down the room pretty well
People in Asia are in those conditions from the birth.
Like they literally put on the sweatshot/hoodie in the early mornings with effing 27 degrees Celsius
That’s not a normal temperature for Europeans.
Also I could not imagine doing some serious thought work in temps like this.
There are a lot of studies of how mental performance is correlated with temperatures with men needing couple degrees even lower than women (eg 22 vs 24)
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Airflow helps a lot, of course. But it must be in swinging motions / constantly changing direction — nervous system doesn’t like same constant stimulus to the point of neuralgia if prolonged.
During heatwaves the fan is no longer sufficient. It can improve ac cold air spreading though. A fan alone will not help you when your walls are warm and when even at night outside temp is above 20dg and humidity is high
You should come to Texas and tell me how well you get along with just a fan. We have had like over 40 days of 40-45 C in a row. The wind feels like a blast furnace and at night it can still be 38 C outside. Even the birds have fled to cooler locals. It is so intense that you can not walk barefoot outside around your home. If your car broke down on the side of a road, you would be dead in less than an hour, even in the shade. I like to tell people that Texas is the next stop after Hell and too be honest it is like living in the Arctic compared to Arizona where the temps are even worse.
I was in Vienna this summer and the inside of the apartment was over 40 for the entire week. Thank god, we were able to buy a portable AC unit from Mediamrkt before they ran out.
Here in Norway AC is not the standard in hotel rooms. For 80% of the year, that's OK - but it can become pretty uncomfortable if you're booking anytime between mid-June and mid-August.
The standard here are heat pumps, at least for residential housing. It is really only a problem if you live in blocks or apartment buildings that are housing associations, with strict rules regarding how such heat pumps should be installed.
With that said, for my travel to Europe - especially down south, AC in the hotel room is an absolute necessity. A couple of years ago we ended up in a completely booked hotel in Italy (mid July), where the AC in our room was busted - it was beyond miserable. Ended up changing hotels after one night.
Since global warming I guess. When there's a heat wave, Norway is probably one of the worst places on hearth to be. You've got near constant sunlight, there's not much time at night to cool your house.
Well, summers are summers. Besides typical eu ac is a thermal pump, you can heat up with it, although even in mediterannean winter it's not quite adequate.
At least in France, almost all excess deaths were in hospitals and retirement homes. The rest were workers. And we had more heat than Germany. Yes, it is a necessity in some places (schools, nursing homes, hospitals). an AC at home is a luxury. Which, great if you can afford it.
Hearing that ac at home is a luxury in France when piss poor romania/moldova do install them left and right sounds borderline satirical. Ffs an ac is not that expensive. And running it is not that expensive, especially with french nuclear
And AC can heat too! For example, in some EU countries gas boilers are still a huge thing, even though increasingly archaic. At the same time many of its users denounce AC because of reasons, apparently missing the fact that an AC is an (air-to-air) heat pump. Incredible how Big Boiler somehow convinced people to keep heating their houses by burning gas in these contraptions while ACs could do the job with much higher energy efficiency while also cooling the house in summer (and yes many places with these gas boilers have _hot_ summers these days)!
It's not that simple. If you have a gas boiler, you're most likely exchanging heat using radiators which are _designed_ for certain amount of heat exchange. With high water temperature, you can get away with smaller radiator and deliver the same amount of heat.
The story gets worse when you put heat pump to the same system - now you have to run it to its limits to have just enough heat in the water to make the radiators release enough heat to barely heat up the room.
Of course, it's only that simple to replace one heat source with another, why wouldn't anyone do it already?
In our London apartment leasehold, we have a water-sourced air conditioning unit. No external condenser required, it instead dumps the heat into the waste water. It has been incredibly helpful during this heat wave as someone who really struggles in the heat and works from home.
It's not ideal during a drought though to be using water like that, it would be nice if we had a grey water tank system so we didn't have to waste drinking water. It doesn't seem possible to install a grey water tank like that in our apartment though. Given our apartment already has district heating, there's not a super strong reason why it couldn't have district cooling as well, but the regulations are not in our favour here.
We installed it all without planning permission, although it still might require permission from the freeholder depending on the rules regarding Service Media alterations (as it requires new plumbing for our mains water).
Because weather engineering is experimentation with potentially huge unintended consequences both for the people in the relevant region as well as people in neighbouring regions and potentially even further.
How would you feel if your neighbour started doing something that was good for them but disastrous for you? Or something with good intentions that turned out to just be a huge mistake causing billions in damages, maybe even lives lost?
Weather engineering is extremely risky, we can barely predict the weather a few hours in advance. We have no idea what kind of havoc we might cause trying to do it on a large scale.
They think global warming is a minor threat that requires minimal to no changes in regulations, but heat waves (that, according to her, have always been the same every year) are a massive threat to the public and requires immediate changes in regulation.
I've been thinking for a while about whether it would be feasible to produce an affordable 'personal cooling chamber' for lower income people in places getting scorched in the summer that don't have A/C.
Basically an automotive air conditioning unit hooked up to a battery and solar panel, with a tanning bed type form factor (up to maybe capsule hotel size), painted or coated to reflect light & heat. Highly portable.
I'm not sure if it's remotely practical, but it would be interesting to run the numbers, and I'm certain there is at least someone out there who would buy it even if the cost turned out to be higher than I envision.
You can already get small portable air conditioners but until recently, most people with low incomes wouldn't spend £300 on something they might only need for 4 weeks per year and needs storing the rest of the time. That might change of course as time goes by.
What some people in the UK do is go to local air conditioned public buildings like libraries (which they are welcome to do) and occasionally a large air conditioned store or shopping centre.
I'm not convinced by the author's point that ACs do not impose a burden on the electrical grid. They write that ACs have gotten more efficient, which may be true, but that's the same Windows developers have been saying over years and yet boot times and hardware requirements have gone way up. One million efficient units still require more energy than no units. And while I definitely believe that European hospitals and retirement homes sadly need ACs now (thanks global warming), I'm not sure everyone and their dog needs one.
I also have reservations about why an American libertarian think tank writes about what Europeans should do, but that's probably on me.
Most of the grid is built for winter. Summer has huge overcapacity. That's also why France exported every single day and hour this summer despite all the stories of shut down nuclear plants
Europe had tens of thousands of excess deaths from heatwaves this year. It's not about american think tank but basic will to avoid suffering
The reason why they aren't much of a problem for the grid is solar. Right now we already have the issue, that in some areas we're throwing away the majority of the produced electricity. Very common in e.g. southern germany.
Conveniently, cooling is especially needed when the energy production from solar is at its maximum.
I've been part of projects building 20-40 MW solar installations in southern germany and on average we throw away >50% of what we generate.
There is SO MUCH SOLAR now, we don't know what to do with all the energy.
>while I definitely believe that European hospitals and retirement homes sadly need ACs now (thanks global warming), I'm not sure everyone and their dog needs one.
If a 10-day heat wave cuts work productivity by 10% (which is optimistic IMO, it's probably worse in countries where people aren't used to it), that's equivalent to a 1-day general strike. If the workers actually managed to pull off a general strike in modern times, you can be sure the state wouldn't be happy with business as usual.
> I also have reservations about why an American libertarian think tank writes about what Europeans should do, but that's probably on me.
My thoughts exactly, except in my mind it's pretty clear that it's about influencing the climate change discourse... The less people are bothered by the rising temperatures, the more they will acquiesce to environmentally unfriendly policy.
I'm still brothered by climate change every time i get out of my apartment. I still don't want to feel miserable during heatwave. This argument is utter nonsense considering most of Europe has summer clean electric overcapacity. It's even more nonsensical in case of hvacs because it leads to pollution reduction by replacing gas heating
European citizens should have obstacles put into their path to access one of the great life-enhancing technologies of the last century … so they will vote for the “right” policies as implemented by the politicians setting up those obstacles?
I mean it's mostly about energy efficiency, a well insulated house is as easy to cool in summer as it is to heat in winter. Most heat pumps can also cool and new construction in most European countries like Germany is equipped with floor heating and central ventilation which in summer allows you to run around 18 degree Celsius hot water through the system to cool it, that yields around 20-40 Watt of cooling power per square meter, and that's often sufficient to keep things chilly. Mind you not American style 18 degree Celsius kind of chilly, but 20-25 degrees easily, which I think is quite nice. The bonus of this system is that it's mostly "radiative" cooling as the cold surface acts as an absorber of infrared radiation, I find it much more pleasant than having cold air blown into your face.
We equipped our founding era building with wall heating and will test out the heatpump based cooling next summer, if it's not enough I would consider installing a small AC unit, that's super easy as well.
Don't know what the article wants to say, there's no ban on AC anywhere in Europe and small units are quite affordable, you can get a single split unit from Mitsubishi for 500 € from Italy. The only nuisance is that installation is heavily regulated in Germany so they rip you off with insane cost. That's definitely a thing that needs to change in my opinion.
This is all, sadly, very true. Anti-AC sentiment is prevalent throughout Europe, and like all superstions, it's based on false assumptions, and extremely resistant to actual evidence.
Very strange take, you can buy an airco unit in the EU today get it delivered tomorrow morning and, assuming it's the portable kind that just need to be plugged and exhaust outside, have it running right away. For more permanent ones you might need a professional to install it if you don't know yourself. There is absolutely 0 barrier if you need or even just want one.
Proof in Belgium : https://www.coolblue.be/en/air-conditioners/filter which ironically enough aren't even available anymore because they are out of stock, so clearly purchased showing people had no problem getting them. Alternative example 12000BTU A+++ energy rating delivery next week https://www.bol.com/be/fr/p/climatiseur-mobile-puissant-clim... To be clear I'm not advocating to buy these, or not, only that they are freely and conveniently available.
I live in France. That kind of aircon is garbage both in how much it can cool a room and how efficient it is due to under pressure.
You can get a portable split-system if you have a balcony.
But installing a real full-size AC with a large external unit is prohibited in most cases. If you’re renting you’re of course out of luck. An apartment, even one you own-forget it.
I've been to a little town in Pakistan where they sell meat out in the open and you can get a hair cut on the street. Houses are run down as you would expect but you better believe they all seemed to have AC units.
A total ban is nonsensical. If you’re concerned about noise regulate the sound level. If you’re concerned about energy use, tax it and put the money raised into a solar subsidy. But the idea you can have a heat pump and can’t have an AC is absurd because a heat pump literally is an AC flipped around.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I am wondering what luxury will next become a necessity if we keep increasing our energy usage in order to get both more luxuries and necessities?
On the bright side, I suppose one mitigating factor is that renewable energy makes it less harmful to use energy to power A/C usage.
The truth is that until recently AC was not needed in the mild climates of much of the continent and it is already present everywhere in the South and East. Regulation and affordability is part of the story, but its far from the primary factor for most people.
Its funny how its mostly US-based libertarian types concerned about AC in Europe. There are plenty of things Europe over-regulates, but this is not it.
> During a heat wave in 2022, one Frenchwoman said AC “makes you sick, and it gives you a headache.” Left-wing French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon has claimed air conditioning “destroys your sinuses.”
AC giving people headaches and destroying their sinuses sounds a bit bonkers. Ok let people install it then, slap a “government believes this may give you headaches and destroy your sinuses” sticker on it and let people decide.
I guess before the heat wave this could have a been a litmus test for stupidity but now it should be a litmus test for maliciousness.
Imagine a world where a larger share of companies focus on actual, verifiable improvement of outcomes for people. Not a world dominated by selling more consumption. A world where we go to work to make things better. Outcomes driven by improvements in human health, longevity, and happiness, not by bottom lines and profit margins. To get to that world we will have to be more open about being imposters.
For sure.
I'm from Germany (but with an AC) as well and am always amazed when people tell me that AC makes you sick. Even young people sometimes replicate this "Oh you gotta be careful not to get sick" and would rather be in 30+°C indoors.
How come Germans get sick while the rest of the world seems to be doing fine and is even productive during summer (it feels like Germany grinds to a halt during heatwaves).
Exactly. It is like never turning the heater on once the temperature drops to -10°C (then catching a cold and getting sick).
So once it is too hot, just turn the AC on and you won't get sick or risk a heat stroke either.
We'll come back to this in several months for a winter freeze to see if Europe has basic heating to keep themselves warm (or will they not turn the heaters on for some reason) and in a year, to see if the rest of Europe have learned their lesson to just have basic AC installed for the next heatwave.
In Japan people often claim to be "allergic" to AC too for some reason, and there have been many stories I've heard from foreigners whose Japanese wives refuse to let them run the AC during the night either.
Personally I think their "allergy" is just because most AC units in Japan are disgustingly moldy and never cleaned regularly.
> HumanProgress.org is a project of the Cato Institute with major support from the John Templeton Foundation and the Searle Freedom Trust [1]
> The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. [2]
It's nothing more than US libertarian think tank trying to influence EU policy... Perhaps in an effort to push more anti climate change agenda/discourse in US (but that might be just my projection).
I think even when it's 45C and your boomers cook alive in their concrete ovens, I will still see these sneering opinions from the enlightened master race, civilized to the point of welcoming their own extinction to preserve the klimat for someone else's children.
okay, sure. I only removed it because I know that questioning the mass hysteria of that brief era gets you flagged.
>the RKI estimated roughly 2,600–4,900 heat-related deaths annually in 2022–2025
>Germany reported about 2,800 COVID-19-associated deaths in the 2024/25 season, which covers most of the 2025 winter and spring.
so yes, taking Germany as the example, the world-ending plague now kills fewer boomers per year than summer does, despite it being over 4 years since anyone wore face condoms or gave a shit about bi-weekly boosters.
The AC propaganda coming from the US this year is really strange and out of proportion. About ten times as many people die from the cold in Europe as die from the heat.
This is not propaganda what a nonsense. The fact that more ppl die from cold is not an argument against using ACs. It's an argument to have hvacs to get proper electrified cooling and heating
>Yet as heat waves kill tens of thousands of Europeans each year
...Each year? Was it the case every year twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago? What has changed, miss Follett?
Last words from the article:
>But forgoing air conditioning is a refusal to move on from a lethally hot past.
Gee, I wonder if this global warming thing wasn't a mistake to let happen...
If that author is right, then we can and should punish the people responsible for global warming? Because that includes a lot of her colleagues at Cato and WaPo. The same who were against the same carbon taxes that would be useful to reduce and mitigate the global warming that kills...
But I have to say, AC is not "banned" anywhere in Europe, apart from certain cantons of Switzerland. In Germany you have a right to AC actually, if your community votes to "veto" the installation a court can overturn that.
Exactly, the whole premise of the article is a bit of a strawman. In fact, where I live, the demand for AC installation is so high that you have to wait months for a company to install a unit for you.
These extreme heat waves are a fairly new phenomenon, summers in central Europe just didn't use to get so hot for such a long stretch of time even a few decades ago. Now that they've become the way they are, people are doing what? Correct, installing AC units. Imagine that.
But let's not forget that energy is also on average a lot more expensive in Europe than in the US. The cost plus environmental concerns, which seem to fair less high in the public conscience on the other side of the Atlantic, have also been reasons why people were not keen on AC units in the past.
In England, if you own a house, you generally have permitted development rights to install one, subject to some fairly common-sense rules. If you live in a flat, though, it’s a very different story: you will need planning permission *as well as* freeholder consent, and the process generally involves engineering/structural/architect drawings and freehold-consent paperwork. The freeholder can also charge you their legal and administration costs, even if they ultimately reject the application. Essentially it's >5K of paperwork which might be wasted if it's rejected even just to install a single 5KW split.
So in the hottest parts of London and other major cities, where a large proportion of people live in flats, installing AC can be very difficult in practice. In the cooler commuter towns, where houses are much more common, it’s considerably easier.
Why can't they build it into new flat blocks/houses? Nothing outright prevents it but everyone does their best to discourage it. The London Plan, for example, uses a “cooling hierarchy” which 'seeks to reduce any potential overheating and also the need to cool a building through active cooling measures' so good luck getting planning for it.
You mean "In England".
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute
What makes the situation much worse here is we have insanely good insulation on the buildings. They trap heat for the cold winters, but the walls just maintain all the heat during the summers. A new approach is needed to make it livable here.
In my own apartment I am not able to create a cross-breeze through strategic window opening to try and bring in cooler air from outside, so I've resorted to opening a window on one side of the apartment and using a Vornado fan to push air out the window on another side of the apartment - creating a pressurized system.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't have A/C but rather all flats use one system with a large roof condenser, or where that is not possible district cooling or ground source.
Same for Germany, at least in many places. And if your building gets reclassified as being under Denkmalschutz (cultural heritage management) you've won in the Lottery of Pain.
Yes, there are numerous reasons why this is harder to do than just doing it ad-hoc per apartment, but if we’re to see it as infrastructure, it should receive the same level of consideration as other utilities.
All of these options are a non-starter considering basic AC starts from $500. Why should anyone invest more than that?
A national-scale project can likely package cooling for these shafts, possibly emanating from rooftop units.
You can install one on the balcony below the railing level.
The housing company is responsible for the exterior surfaces and thus also responsible for whatever happens to fall on bystanders when it will inevitably happen.
AC installers are also notoriously bad at following placement guidelines.
You can actually install a heat pump in most apartment buildings, as long as it's on the balcony and not visible from the street (=below waist-level). Main reason you wouldn't, is condensate output which has to be piped indoors or into a heated drain during the winter. Or you just pipe it into your balcony's rainwater drain and accept that you can't use the heatpump below 0C.
We're up to more than 15,000: https://www.rki.de/DE/Themen/Gesundheit-und-Gesellschaft/Ges...
I went to my car, turned on the AC, and drank some water. My heart rate went back to normal, but it was pretty unnerving.
The scarier thing was this was a youth sports tournament. These kids are playing all-day tournaments in 33C+ heat (and sometimes 36C+) for a solid two months of the year. While they may cope with the heat better than I do, I worry it’s only a matter of time before tragedy strikes.
That being said, this year I am making an effort to rely less on AC and do some moderate exercise in the heat to increase my tolerance.
And, we have a flaky electricity, without enough focus or renewables, so, because of war(money)games in the middle east we have a huge gas crisis, and having one/two hours of load-shading every day.
So, tell me, what are we going to do when we can't run the freaking AC, because our power grid failed?
This is encouraging curing the symptoms, not the true problem.
And, the more AC we use, it will increase the ambient temp. And more people uses AC, the more the temp grows. How long we are going to keep doing this? it sounds like another corporate drama to put it on us, the general people instead of solving the issue they create. Heat increased, use AC, it's not a luxury, but we are not going to stop destroying environment.
If having a high temperature delta was a concern everyone in Texas would be dead by now.
I set my thermostat to 65F in August. My house is at 67F right now and it's 81F outside (at 7AM). We're still catching up from yesterday. I don't see the point in allowing the condensing unit to shut off when it's this hot and humid out. You are just giving the angry super Mario sun a head start when you let it turn off in the morning. The temperature in my house will still rise to 74-75F with this unit running non stop. The forecast for today is approximately 100F.
At some point, the cost of electricity becomes constant (100% duty cycle). You can't run the air conditioner more than all the time. It makes the equipment last a lot longer when it's not being cycled every 10-15 minutes. It can be cheaper to just keep things brutally cold given the relatively affordable electric rates. $300 capacitor replacement can buy a lot of kilowatt hours in the ercot and entergy markets. Short cycling a compressor with high pressure and you could be replacing one every other year.
If any of this sounds offensive, I would invite the offended party to join me for lunch in downtown Houston or Galveston sometime this week.
Ouch, that's far too cold for me in the UK. I have the house at 20C during the day (68F), and only drop to 18C (64F) at night.
When I had poor insulation that meant heating was regularly on 8 months a year, although it's on less now I live in a well insulated house.
This is not unique to ACs. Anything on the outside of a building requires your co-owners to agree.
HOAs don't make neighbors co-owners of your own property, do they?
Anyway HOA is something that shouldn't even exist. Or at least not with power to prevent people from having air conditioning in their home.
Home-owner associations in Europe are frequently set up for apartment buildings, in which case, yes, the roof, foundation, hallways, stairwells, main piping, electricity, etc are all legally co-owned. Primary purpose of HOAs is to save for & plan long-term maintenance on the entire building.
HOAs for neighbourhoods, or blocks with single-family homes or terraced houses are pretty rare in Europe.
Not everything is a HOA
They force homeowners to decide together (and pay for) everything from road maintenance to what noise levels are allowed.
Another issue they cause is that, of course, the homeowners living there do not just use HOAs to override the wishes of individuals, but also feel disinclined to let the local authorities ... and the locals ... operate as normal there, given that they pay for everything, sometimes literally including the roads in the area around them. These communities may have banks, parks, even beaches, and there are conflicts about who gets to go there, given the local homeowners pay for maintenance. For example, given they clean up left-behind garbage, do people from the nearby town get to play there ... and leave behind more garbage?
The root of the problem is that more housing is no longer a net positive for many communities in a great many places. The increase in taxation income does not justify the extra infrastructure in many places. This means local authorities refuse building projects unless they pay for their own infrastructure. Hence, HOAs are being forced to take over the functions that public authorities used to have ... because local authorities are forcing the responsibilities that local authorities used to have on them. Of course, then the public nature of public space goes into question.
The point of HOAs is to force homeowners to CO-decide (in houses: to make things cheaper for local councils) on what happens to the shared infrastructure. What and how to spend of maintenance and what to change.
If it was just a matter of red tape it would be fine, but in France people would fight you on AC because it's ugly/noisy/warms up the street.
So you can get it rejected by people who live in a flat where heat is not as much of a problem as your (ground floor vs higher floor, window orientation) or by landlords who don't even live in the building.
People who don't have a balcony are screwed and are entirely dependent on homeowners association which arbitrarily can agree or not, or they can stay indecisive about it and not let you do anything.
Well, if you have a balcony? you just put it there and make the necessary holes for it, problem solved.
The effect is exactly the same - you just have AC installed. In one case you have to go through totally unnecessary hoops, and in other case, you just do whatever you want.
What's even the point of it?
edit: I guess you could route the drain pipe anywhere if you wanted, so I retract my previous statement.
There are also systems that spray the water back at the AC unit to cool it down, this is supposed to both improve efficiency and evaporate the water so you don't have to deal with it. I am sure those have some downsides, too.
And with spraying it on ac you want complete evaporation or you are back to same problem.
As said it is not too hard problem but still something that most likely requires consideration.
Sure thing, you could go to court if they have any problem, but who is going to fight for AC worth $500 for a few years just to get it installed?
Best would probably be to use the existing rainwater pipes that lead down to the sewers - all building have those. But good luck getting that past your HOA-equivalent, as that will most probably involve some modifications to the building and we can't have that, no!
I don't have AC at home. Some think I don't install it because I somehow don't get hot in summer or cold at winter. It's the other way around. We, people, have one of the best thermoregulation systems among animals, our whole skin is essentially a huge cooling system. The only way to render it incapable is... stop using it for a prolonged amount of time. It's use it or lose it all over again.
If you don't believe me, read what ultra-marathon runners have to say. If a trained athlete can survive Badwater, almost everyone can train themselves to survive a European heatwave.
Sure, some people can't. Some need AC because of cardiovascular conditions. It's fine, let them have it. But some people can't walk because of musculoskeletal conditions, but no one would argue that a wheelchair is a necessity.
Europe north of France is substantially cooler than much of the US, even on the hottest days. Many homes could get by on ceiling fans, but they are very uncommon here.
We've had a series of heat waves this summer, and temperatures have gotten very high inside. Much depends on the location of course, and the type of building, and stuff like that, but the fact is that in Belgium alone thousands of people have died because of the heat. Thousands of people that would still be with us if they would have had adequate cooling.
When it's close to 40 °C in your home, a ceiling fan is not going to make a meaningful difference.
And we need to keep in mind that summers are in all likelihood going to get hotter and hotter.
There were many excess deaths, but there was also a shortage of fans here. Good fans could have also saved their lives.
IR blocking film/tint on outside works great if you can't get windows shaded.
Hottest the hottest south facing room in my house got in the UK this year was 31.8C on the 13th August.
The loft got upto 43C, but that's what insulation is for.
That said, you're right, things are changing. I'm looking at getting AC installed this winter (no way I was paying summer prices).
I don't know how bad the situation in Europe is, but we're already at point where there are times and places on Earth where one can construct a primal instinctive understanding of that by simply walking out of an air conditioned room(to which you SHOULD return within half an hour and MUST within an hour). "Just get fans bro" is tone deaf.
That said, if you are able to get a ground source heat pump, that's awesome, but it's something like 10x to 20x the price of even a really good ceiling fan.
Ground source is overhyped and overpriced. District heating and air-exchange AC is still the winning solution.
I'd still favour the fan, I've lived in India for longer periods with consistently around 32-36 C and a fan is perfectly enough after a little while of adapting.
Charge the battery from the solar and it powers the AC in the evening.
You'll generate more than enough during the day to run AC and fill the battery to run it overnight.
Still using grid sources in winter, but you aren't using the AC. Although you might find air-air AC in heat mode is better than your gas boiler.
You can replace farmland, but that seems like a really bad idea with Globalism's decline. Who knows what's going to happen to the food supply chain over the next 30 years. The only other option is attaching them to the exterior of historic buildings, and heaven forbid! Think about the character of the neighborhood!
Tell me you're German without telling me you're German
Most Germans don't own ceiling fans, which is the problem.
Ceiling fans should be installed before any AC.
If you are not convinced, there is a one-hour video by Technology Connections on YouTube that will argue the point more in-depth that anything I could write here.
Source: https://www.goteborgenergi.se/foretag/fjarrkyla
Same goes for tree shade and sensible city planning, also architecture (see all those textured dark grey or black condos currently in fashion and shudder). The other day I was biking along a road after dark and residual heat around it is so noticeable, biking 5 meters closer to the trees it felt so much colder.
I've spent some time in SE Asia. Many homes out there don't have an A/C. Apparently the real number is like 85%.
Should air conditioning maybe be less regulated in Europe? Sure. Do I enjoy A/C on occasion? Sure, guilty. Is climate change real? Sure. But A/C is a necessity like water/sewage/electricity? In Europe?? Idk.
Edit: I agree in advance with everyone saying it sucks without AC but just saying, a strategic fan (and opening windows if possible, closing curtains, etc) can be OP. It might sound stupid but for years I literally forgot fans existed because I was where everywhere is AC and often no fan. Just try it...
Edit 2: I think if you're in a hot AND especially humid place (probably not EU) I'm not sure if I'd take AC or dehumidifier
Even if I somehow manage to pull the air in, the moment I close it - the walls that have all that heat will start giving it back again, bringing the temperature back to where it was.
It's so funny, that when the winter starts, it's long into the winter before I have to turn on heating in my apartment.
Dehumidifier works pretty well, provided it's built in to the AC unit, portable one's will increase the room temp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_QfX0SYCE8
Portable one's heat dispenser is inside your room, AC unit's outside. But the issue being, as it disperses the heat outside, it's probably still increasing the ambient heat?
Dehumidifier mode in AC works by cooling the air below the dew point, removing the condensation, then warming the air up (either by itself or literally heating it up)
Like they literally put on the sweatshot/hoodie in the early mornings with effing 27 degrees Celsius
That’s not a normal temperature for Europeans.
Also I could not imagine doing some serious thought work in temps like this.
There are a lot of studies of how mental performance is correlated with temperatures with men needing couple degrees even lower than women (eg 22 vs 24)
—
Airflow helps a lot, of course. But it must be in swinging motions / constantly changing direction — nervous system doesn’t like same constant stimulus to the point of neuralgia if prolonged.
I was in Vienna this summer and the inside of the apartment was over 40 for the entire week. Thank god, we were able to buy a portable AC unit from Mediamrkt before they ran out.
The standard here are heat pumps, at least for residential housing. It is really only a problem if you live in blocks or apartment buildings that are housing associations, with strict rules regarding how such heat pumps should be installed.
With that said, for my travel to Europe - especially down south, AC in the hotel room is an absolute necessity. A couple of years ago we ended up in a completely booked hotel in Italy (mid July), where the AC in our room was busted - it was beyond miserable. Ended up changing hotels after one night.
Since when should there be AC in friggin' Norway?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Temperat...
The story gets worse when you put heat pump to the same system - now you have to run it to its limits to have just enough heat in the water to make the radiators release enough heat to barely heat up the room.
Of course, it's only that simple to replace one heat source with another, why wouldn't anyone do it already?
It's not ideal during a drought though to be using water like that, it would be nice if we had a grey water tank system so we didn't have to waste drinking water. It doesn't seem possible to install a grey water tank like that in our apartment though. Given our apartment already has district heating, there's not a super strong reason why it couldn't have district cooling as well, but the regulations are not in our favour here.
We installed it all without planning permission, although it still might require permission from the freeholder depending on the rules regarding Service Media alterations (as it requires new plumbing for our mains water).
Technology Connections has a new video exactly about it.
How would you feel if your neighbour started doing something that was good for them but disastrous for you? Or something with good intentions that turned out to just be a huge mistake causing billions in damages, maybe even lives lost?
Weather engineering is extremely risky, we can barely predict the weather a few hours in advance. We have no idea what kind of havoc we might cause trying to do it on a large scale.
They think global warming is a minor threat that requires minimal to no changes in regulations, but heat waves (that, according to her, have always been the same every year) are a massive threat to the public and requires immediate changes in regulation.
Basically an automotive air conditioning unit hooked up to a battery and solar panel, with a tanning bed type form factor (up to maybe capsule hotel size), painted or coated to reflect light & heat. Highly portable.
I'm not sure if it's remotely practical, but it would be interesting to run the numbers, and I'm certain there is at least someone out there who would buy it even if the cost turned out to be higher than I envision.
What some people in the UK do is go to local air conditioned public buildings like libraries (which they are welcome to do) and occasionally a large air conditioned store or shopping centre.
I also have reservations about why an American libertarian think tank writes about what Europeans should do, but that's probably on me.
Europe had tens of thousands of excess deaths from heatwaves this year. It's not about american think tank but basic will to avoid suffering
Conveniently, cooling is especially needed when the energy production from solar is at its maximum.
I've been part of projects building 20-40 MW solar installations in southern germany and on average we throw away >50% of what we generate.
There is SO MUCH SOLAR now, we don't know what to do with all the energy.
If a 10-day heat wave cuts work productivity by 10% (which is optimistic IMO, it's probably worse in countries where people aren't used to it), that's equivalent to a 1-day general strike. If the workers actually managed to pull off a general strike in modern times, you can be sure the state wouldn't be happy with business as usual.
My thoughts exactly, except in my mind it's pretty clear that it's about influencing the climate change discourse... The less people are bothered by the rising temperatures, the more they will acquiesce to environmentally unfriendly policy.
Good luck with that.
We equipped our founding era building with wall heating and will test out the heatpump based cooling next summer, if it's not enough I would consider installing a small AC unit, that's super easy as well.
Don't know what the article wants to say, there's no ban on AC anywhere in Europe and small units are quite affordable, you can get a single split unit from Mitsubishi for 500 € from Italy. The only nuisance is that installation is heavily regulated in Germany so they rip you off with insane cost. That's definitely a thing that needs to change in my opinion.
Proof in Belgium : https://www.coolblue.be/en/air-conditioners/filter which ironically enough aren't even available anymore because they are out of stock, so clearly purchased showing people had no problem getting them. Alternative example 12000BTU A+++ energy rating delivery next week https://www.bol.com/be/fr/p/climatiseur-mobile-puissant-clim... To be clear I'm not advocating to buy these, or not, only that they are freely and conveniently available.
You can get a portable split-system if you have a balcony.
But installing a real full-size AC with a large external unit is prohibited in most cases. If you’re renting you’re of course out of luck. An apartment, even one you own-forget it.
There's a lot of buildings to tear down and convert if you want to legitimately make comparisons.
On the bright side, I suppose one mitigating factor is that renewable energy makes it less harmful to use energy to power A/C usage.
Pretty much all you need to know in 2026.
Its funny how its mostly US-based libertarian types concerned about AC in Europe. There are plenty of things Europe over-regulates, but this is not it.
But hey, at least we preserved the nice 19th century Parisian landscape.
AC giving people headaches and destroying their sinuses sounds a bit bonkers. Ok let people install it then, slap a “government believes this may give you headaches and destroy your sinuses” sticker on it and let people decide.
I guess before the heat wave this could have a been a litmus test for stupidity but now it should be a litmus test for maliciousness.
Nothing unique about Germans in this case, sorry. ;)
So once it is too hot, just turn the AC on and you won't get sick or risk a heat stroke either.
We'll come back to this in several months for a winter freeze to see if Europe has basic heating to keep themselves warm (or will they not turn the heaters on for some reason) and in a year, to see if the rest of Europe have learned their lesson to just have basic AC installed for the next heatwave.
Personally I think their "allergy" is just because most AC units in Japan are disgustingly moldy and never cleaned regularly.
You are reading propaganda.
> The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. [2]
It's nothing more than US libertarian think tank trying to influence EU policy... Perhaps in an effort to push more anti climate change agenda/discourse in US (but that might be just my projection).
Thank you, case closed.
[1] https://humanprogress.org/about/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute
edit: (well the author decided to remove part of his comment mentioning "face-condoms", too bad)
>the RKI estimated roughly 2,600–4,900 heat-related deaths annually in 2022–2025
>Germany reported about 2,800 COVID-19-associated deaths in the 2024/25 season, which covers most of the 2025 winter and spring.
so yes, taking Germany as the example, the world-ending plague now kills fewer boomers per year than summer does, despite it being over 4 years since anyone wore face condoms or gave a shit about bi-weekly boosters.
>Yet as heat waves kill tens of thousands of Europeans each year
...Each year? Was it the case every year twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago? What has changed, miss Follett?
Last words from the article:
>But forgoing air conditioning is a refusal to move on from a lethally hot past.
Gee, I wonder if this global warming thing wasn't a mistake to let happen...
If that author is right, then we can and should punish the people responsible for global warming? Because that includes a lot of her colleagues at Cato and WaPo. The same who were against the same carbon taxes that would be useful to reduce and mitigate the global warming that kills...
So every adult human and corporation?