Buildings so Cool that the Earth is Burning With Jealousy | Understanding the Cooling Paradox

Cooling the World is warming the Planet. How, you ask? Read on as we explore the paradox of space cooling, in the hopes of finding a solution.???

Coming in after a long day at work, even the short distance between your air-conditioned car and inside your house is irritating enough in the scorching summer heat. You just can’t wait to crash on the couch in your air-conditioned living room, switch on the TV, and just…relax. ‘Let’s catch up on the daily news,’ you think.?

“2023 was the world's hottest year on record, EU scientists confirm - 2023 was the warmest year in the last 1,00,000 years. Air-conditioners are surging in a Warming World, approximately ?10% of global greenhouse gas emissions are released by RACs annually”?

Hearing this concerns you. You want to do something about it...but what? Maybe switch off your AC? Perhaps another time, today has been quite exhausting.?

Anyway, what difference will one AC make?

Air Conditioning or Human Society: Who is the Villain??

The exponential rise in temperature only adds to our dependency on mechanical air conditioners, in a kind of paradox (more specifically the Cooling Paradox).?

Remember the elders casually commenting that they didn’t need so many ACs growing up? Cut to today, we have approximately 2 billion cooling appliances in operation, with the potential for this number to escalate to 14 billion by 2050! Even in developing nations like India, the cooling demand is expected to shoot up by 11 times by the next two decades.???

What changed? How did we discover mechanical air conditioning, and when did it go out of control?

While the world was celebrating the Industrial Revolution and reaping its benefits, people like physicist John Tyndall tried to nudge everyone that the amount of energy we are suddenly using is going to release a lot of CO2, causing the temperature of the whole planet to shoot up. He called it ‘Global Warming’, hoping people would be alarmed. Of course, we ignored the warning. It was only around the early 20th Century when we realized that things were starting to get heated up (exactly by 0.3°C over 50 years).

It was not just a thing of scientific journals and papers; society was actually suffering from high temperatures and heat waves. Then some of them visited the Missouri State Building for the St. Louis World Fair in 1904 and experienced the wonderful marvel of technological innovation: the mechanical air-conditioner. And since then, there has been no looking back.?????

As with any new technology, ACs soon became a luxury hallmark in modern homes for the elites of the 20th Century. The technology gradually traveled all across the globe as it became more affordable.?

Now, in the 21st century that ‘luxury’ has not just become an apparent necessity, but a fuel to the very fire it's been trying to put out. According to a report by IEA, CO2 emissions from cooling technologies have tripled since 1990, reaching 1,130 million tonnes and contributing to a notable temperature shift (for the worse). In metropolitan cities, the heat from running ACs at night is raising ambient temperatures by 1°C ( or 1.8°F).

So are we Beyond Redemption, or can we ‘Cool-Down’ a Little???

In the report, IEA emphasizes the importance of reducing the energy consumption of these appliances to align with the goals outlined in the Paris Agreement. By enhancing cooling efficiency and adopting environmentally friendly refrigerants, the world has the potential to decrease CO2 emissions by an estimated 210 to 460 billion tonnes over the next four decades. The India Cooling Action Plan of 2019 also describes how the adoption of climate-appropriate building envelopes has the potential to reduce cooling energy demand by 20% over the next decade.?

The cooling paradox problem seems daunting, but the solution sounds like a utopian dream. Is it wishful thinking to imagine a future where our buildings can keep cool without making the planet jealous????