4 things a week: AC units and Audrey Tang

Jumping around this week as so many things have caught my attention. So bare with...

1. World

Extreme heat kills a staggering 356,000 people globally per year and that figure is only likely to rise with global warming. If I had money to put into stocks and shares, air conditioning companies would be a safe bet. In 2016 there was an estimated 1.6bn air conditioning units in the world. By 2050 that’s set to be 5.6bn. More than 50% of those will be in India and China. In America, the introduction of affordable air-conditioning in the 1950s caused a migration of people to previously low-inhabited states including Arizona and Texas. Now 1.6 million people live in Pheonix where temperatures were over 110F for more than 50 days of the year in 2023. This pales in comparison to the 33.8 million people living in Delhi where the temperatures hit a record 50C/122F earlier this year. So, air conditioning isn’t just a nice to have, it’s becoming increasingly essential to survival.?

The challenge is that in hot countries, cooling consumes around 20%-40% of household electricity . Not only is this a huge source of CO2 emissions, it’s expensive.

So what’s the alternative. A company called SkyCool have developed roof panels that reflecting sunlight and radiate heat back into the atmosphere. A South American initiative used urban greening to cool an entire city by 2C . Even just dehumidifying a hot and humid room can make it significantly more comfortable to live in. One thing that’s going to be important however, is redefining comfort. I grew up in a freezing cold house. My father refused to put the central heating on until November so we had a small electric heater that we moved from room to room and if we weren’t wearing at least two jumpers then there it was no use complaining about the cold. I now find it genuinely uncomfortable being in a double glazed house with the heating on whilst friends of mine expect nothing less. There is no single idea of comfort. The idea of a temperature controlled, low-humidity room at a steady 21C as being ‘comfortable’ can be traced solely back to the marketing messages of AC companies. There is no environment on earth that mirrors. It’s not even good for your health!?

Moving forwards we ultimately need to rethink the design of buildings. Lower buildings, use of shade, air flow, careful positioning of windows and painting buildings white can do a huge amount to reduce the temperature of a building without needing to turn on the AC. It’s all very well having homes built to rely on AC, until you can’t. A power outage in the height of summer in Phoenix could put thousands in hospital . For those living in homes already built, the best thing you can do is rethink what comfort means to you and whether you might need to rely on the AC quite as much as you do.

2. Innovation

Do you know what a Digital Product Passport is? Well they are coming in, in the EU.? They are part of the new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which aim to facilitate a 55% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. The passports themselves will help facilitate circularity through enhanced transparency on carbon footprint, resource usage, recyclability and traceability on materials and parts. This would help consumers to make better choices. businesses to manage and reduce the impact of the products they produce and recyclers to know exactly what materials (and therefore what value) can be extracted from any particular?product.

The first DPPs are not for products per-se but for batteries. These will be compulsory from 2027 meaning that every EV and industrial battery on the EU market will require a unique battery passport that can be accessed via a QR code. ?

Obviously there is a lot to work out here. There are a bunch of companies already offering service to create and host your product passports. There needs to be clear regulation or guidance on standardising these so they actually work across countries and industries. It’s all very well having a passport that is recognised in the EU, but what if that product ends up in South East Asia? Another thing is the suggestion that these would be tokenised on the block-chain to ensure security. For a start, most people don’t understand the block-chain, secondly there is a concern around energy consumption ; which is slightly ironic.

Anyway, DPPs are coming, they won’t affect most of us for a while, but it’s worth reading up on them. I found this document pretty useful.?

3. Morrama

We’ve recently renewed our lease on our beautiful office in Hackney and I’m reminded of just how much I love this space. Dan from the team took some cool photos of it yesterday, so I thought I’d share them here…

4. Inspiration

My inspirational person of the year (so far) has to be Audrey Tang. A Taiwanese hacker turned politician Audrey has been instrumental in changing the way the government works in Taiwan. In 2012 she was part of the digital community that created?g0v , pronounced Gov Zero. Initially seen as a protest group, Gov Zero essentially mirrored government websites, rewriting them to make the more accessible and understandable and enabling everyday people to be involved in the conversation.

After the Sunflower movement in which a group of students effectively took over and ran the government for 3 weeks, and which Tang helped live stream across the country, the government began embracing technology as a way to reach and work with the people. Audrey was asked by a government minister to be their mentor and went on to become minister of digital affairs. During her 8 years in politics the trust in the government amongst the Taiwanese people went from 9% to 91%. If you are to read one (more) article this week, let it be this amazing write up about Audrey Tang in the Guardian.

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P.s. Just incase you got to the end of this and aren't sure who I am, I'm:

• an industrial designer (I design and engineer physical objects)
• founder of Morrama | Certified B Corp
• former tutor of Design Futures at the Royal College of Art
• co-instigator of Design Declares