Comment by throwaway473825
1 day ago
Regarding air conditioning in Europe, I suspect that there are other interests at play given that there has been zero pushback against air conditioning in cars.
Air conditioning in buildings is likely viewed as a threat to gas providers as most modern cooling devices also have a heating mode that competes directly with gas heating.
At least here in the UK, recent revisions to the default planning rules around heat pumps (“Permitted Development” legislation) removed the restriction that an install be “used solely for heating purposes” and revised this to “not be used solely for the purpose of cooling”.
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant also permits cooling - it’s based on the heating credentials of a unit only.
So in Britain at least, installing cooling systems in private residences seems to be getting easier.
> Air conditioning in buildings is likely viewed as a threat to gas providers as most modern cooling devices also have a heating mode that competes directly with gas heating.
Not sure it makes sense, most of those countries are already phasing out fuel/gas boilers.
IMO it's just cultural shift is slow to adjust (in those countries, a few decades ago AC would have been a wasteful luxury, summer temperature would be well below 30 except for a few days).
People often forget that architecture in (central and northern) Europe is build under the assumption that the climate has more cold extremes than hot extremes. Thus, buildings were constructed to both retain and collect as much heat as possible to save on heating in the winter. Now, if you just slap an AC onto that it will have to fight all of the passive heat collection. In other words, you would have to also close off all south facing and roof windows for it to work.
Furthermore, the way the last mile distribution of power works is often underground (with the cables directly in the sand, no hose or tube around it) which makes it expensive to upgrade to handle a much higher peak consumption. Only lucky thing is that you mostly need AC when the sun is shining, thus local production via photovoltaic cells is a good solution that sidesteps the power grid problem.
It’s a cultural issue, nothing to do with industry interests
You can buy natural gas powered chillers and heat pumps, there are many ways to run a compressor pump.
Reality is much of Europe hasn’t needed air con until recently
mMy phone tells me that the temperature this week has been 15°C above the long term average for this time of year.
Don’t really need air con when the peak temperature in the past has been 20–25°C
Europe is a big place. Domestic air con is ubiquitous in Italy, rare in the UK. But even in the UK, places like shops and offices will usually have air con.
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