Europe’s Cooling Crisis: Rising Demand for Air-Conditioning Amid Heat Waves

In late June, temperatures exceeded 40 °C across much of Europe, prompting “shoppers in France literally forced their way into stores to snatch up portable fans and ACs before they sold out.” Currently only about 20 % of Europeans have home air-conditioning (4 % in the UK), far below the roughly 90 % penetration in the United States. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that worldwide electricity demand for space cooling could more than triple by 2050, with two-thirds of households potentially owning an AC by then.

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• 3 % of global greenhouse-gas emissions stem from current air-conditioning electricity use, slightly more than aviation.

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• The UK Climate Change Committee warns that by mid-century over 90 % of existing homes could overheat during severe heat waves.

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• A research group estimated that air-conditioning prevented nearly 200,000 premature deaths among people over 65 in 2019.

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• Marine Le Pen (far-right politician) pledged to roll out air-conditioning across France if her party assumes power.

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• The British Conservative Party has pledged to overturn net-zero regulations that restrict AC installation in new builds.

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• Fabian Voswinkel, energy-efficiency policy analyst at the IEA, warned that “cooling will become one of the biggest drivers of electricity demand growth worldwide, along with data centers.”

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Left-leaning critics argue that expanding AC primarily benefits affluent households while locking Europe into an energy-intensive cooling model. Nicole Miranda, senior lecturer in engineering at the University of Oxford, cautioned that solutions must be “efficient, equitable, and smart,” warning against “panic-buying inefficient, energy-intensive portable ACs.”

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• “We will need more cooling to protect people” — Nicole Miranda, senior lecturer, University of Oxford

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• “We expect cooling to become one of the biggest drivers of electricity demand growth worldwide, along with data centers,” — Fabian Voswinkel, energy-efficiency policy analyst, IEA

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