Air conditioning alone will never keep Britain cool

Record-breaking, climate change-induced spring temperatures have left many questioning what more they can do to cool down, particularly with many now working from home. 

Meanwhile many parts of the UK recorded their third consecutive 'tropical night' – where temperatures fail to fall below 20C.

The problem is set to get worse. A new normal will produce heatwaves that could see 92 per cent of our existing housing stock overheat, the Climate Change Committee warned last week.

But populist politics should have no place in this new, deadly serious reality.

This week, Conservative politicians set their sights on newish building regulations, perhaps following recent air conditioning wars in France, which saw Marine Le Pen call for "a major air conditioning equipment plan."

The shadow energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, called for the UK to overturn 'a ban' on air conditioning in new homes.

"Our building regulations say that housebuilders must exhaust every other 'passive' option for cooling buildings – from airflow to shutters to awnings – before local council pen pushers will let them install air con," she said.

Quite simply, the current system is not a ban. Builders have to achieve a practical level of efficiency that makes homes resilient to overheating before they turn to mechanical solutions like air conditioning. This is just basic common sense. And in any case, air conditioning could be added if the developers wanted to.

Up until recently, regulations made no provision for overheating risk, so the emphasis on passive cooling was both a welcome addition and a reasonable policy, introduced by Michael Gove as housing secretary in 2021, with Kemi Badenoch as his second-in-command.

It is only sensible to consider how to reduce heat in a building before building a new south-facing property that is festooned with windows. The same logic determines why we build new houses with decent insulation and windows – to keep them warm and make them cheap to heat in winter.

Ms Coutinho is effectively saying that we should not bother with decent windows and sensible shading because we can slap on an air-conditioning unit afterwards. That makes for bad economics.

A shoddily built house will always take more energy to maintain a comfortable temperature. You might get a slightly cheaper house up front, but you will pay for this poor energy efficiency down the line with higher bills.

We should avoid the binary choice suggested by this simplistic announcement. Passive measures like shading, trees and greening urban landscapes will prevent 'heat islands' and will do a great deal of good.

A warming world means that if we are all going to maintain the levels of comfort we are used to, more air conditioning will definitely be needed. To date, an estimated four million Brits have opted for some form of active air conditioning, double the number from three years ago.

Across the UK, the priority will be settings disproportionately used by vulnerable people – hospitals, schools, prisons, and care homes - as the government's climate watchdog pointed out last week.

There are obvious concerns that widespread adoption of active cooling could exacerbate climate change. AC units are power-hungry, and the refrigerants they use are sometimes potent greenhouse gases. Luckily, the sun is typically shining when cooling demand surges, so we can meet that demand with clean, renewable sources, in particular solar.

While air conditioning will become a fact of life for millions more of us in the near future, advocating a policy based solely on air conditioning is a hot take we can do without.

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Dr Richard Lowes is an internationally recognised expert in clean heating, gas transitions and energy policy, and leads the Regulatory Assistance Project's global work on heat and buildings.

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