To what extent does 78 degree homes impact climate change? The answer is very little if we had leadership that pushed zero carbon energy production (nuclear, wind, solar) instead of being bought and paid for by fossil fuel industries
> There are just over 1bn single-room air conditioning units in the world right now – about one for every seven people on earth. Numerous reports have projected that by 2050 there are likely to be more than 4.5bn, making them as ubiquitous as the mobile phone is today. The US already uses as much electricity for air conditioning each year as the UK uses in total. The IEA projects that as the rest of the world reaches similar levels, air conditioning will use about 13% of all electricity worldwide, and produce 2bn tonnes of CO2 a year – about the same amount as India, the world’s third-largest emitter, produces today.
This is missing the point - AC is problematic for exactly the reason you quoted - it produces CO2. My point is that it doesn't need to, and only does because our leadership is some mixture of corrupt, incompetent, or uncaring.
There is no technical reason why 99% of the household energy produced on Earth can't be free of direct carbon emissions. It's a societal issue that it isn't.
I’d argue you are missing my point. There are other issues with A/C (refrigerants are also contributors to CO2, production is an issue), but the finer points of any one technology are not the issue. The issue is that I think it’s a fantasy that we can solve global warming simply with some technical tweaks and no changes whatsoever to our patterns of consumption. “Consume less” is not a message that goes over well.
A quick search online shows that HFCs (refrigerants) are 2% of greenhouse gas emissions, which also accounts for them being thousands of time worse than CO2. Which is way higher than I expected, but still not exactly making-or-breaking climate change.
I really don't see the need to consume less energy if it comes from renewable or carbon-free generation. In general, energy is used for good and productive things. AC in particular lets humans live in climates that would otherwise not be used anywhere near to the extent they are without it.
Realistically with the world we live in, yes, reduction is helpful. But accountability to major producers of emissions is at minimum 100 times more helpful.
