Cool Britannia

• Sultan Al-Jaber, the Cop28 president, said a phase down of fossil fuels was “inevitable and essential”.
• Councils in England and Wales joined calls for a ban on single-use vapes due to environmental concerns.
• Temperatures in China and the US exceeded 52C and 48C respectively (more below).

The Cerberus and Charon heat waves sweeping across Europe are living up to their hellish monikers. The mercury in Sardinia is expected to hit 48C this week. La Palma in the Canary Islands is being evacuated due to fires. The Acropolis in Athens remains closed to tourists because of the danger from overheating. 

Breezy Britain has avoided the worst – for now. A new study in Nature Sustainability reveals the UK faces one of the largest relative increases in demand for cooling technology if the world heats by 2C. 

So what? Cooling down buildings is responsible for roughly 20 per cent of global electricity use and demand is expected to triple by 2050, while air conditioning accounts for 4 per cent of global emissions. Responding to extreme heat by installing more aircon is effectively securing a cooler present in exchange for an even hotter future.

The Central African Republic, Burkina Faso and Mali face the largest absolute increase in cooling demand. This will be a major hindrance to development in a region that already faces acute security and resource challenges.

Meanwhile, Switzerland, the UK and Norway – countries with traditionally little use for air conditioning or other cooling methods – will see an increase of up to 30 per cent in the number of uncomfortably hot days. 

Europe suffered an estimated 61,000 heat-related deaths last summer. The UK, in particular, has failed to heed the warning and risks being blindsided by the challenge of staying cool sustainably. The government’s National Adaptation Plan, leaked to the Guardian yesterday, has been described by experts as “very weak” in response to the impacts of rising heat.

• Power. For the second summer in a row, the government has resorted to turning on backup coal plants as soaring electricity demand matches mid-winter levels. 

• Policy. The Environmental Audit Committee recently opened an inquiry into UK heat resilience as neither the net zero or heat and buildings strategy currently cover the issue in detail. “Cooling isn’t given the attention it needs in UK policy debates,” says Radhika Khosla, co-author of the study and professor at the Oxford University Smith School. 
• Pumps. Air-source heat pumps, despite their name, present an energy-efficient option for cooling. But low public awareness and high installation costs mean that only 55,000 were installed in UK homes last year, compared to 620,000 in France. 

Hot history. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, once said that air conditioning “changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics.” But the city of climate-conquerors has also learnt the hard way that its reliance on aircon can exacerbate inequalities as well as climate impacts.

It is from warmer climbs that Europe should take lessons: “Tapping into the encyclopaedia of vernacular knowledge is going to be really key,” says Khosla. “Because it’s not documented in the same way as more modern solutions, we tend to leave it behind.” Examples include:

• The Cartuja Qanat, a €5 million project in Seville that will replicate the 1,000-year old Persian technology of building underground canals which push cold air to the surface.
• The Al-Bahr towers in Abu Dhabi, which combine the lattice-style architecture of ancient India with an “intelligent” facade that opens and closes depending on temperature.
• The Forest of Winds in Seoul, an elevated park specifically designed to bring cooling air into the city and to trap harmful particulate pollution.

There’s also a burgeoning market for new solutions: ventilation and air conditioning companies raised around $350 million in private equity between 2020 and 2022. But capital commitment still pales in comparison to other clean technologies.

Cold comfort. What’s needed is a more coordinated global approach to heat adaptation. The word “cooling” does not currently appear in the UN’s 2030 sustainable development agenda, its 17 goals or 169 targets. Roughly 30 countries have actually implemented a Cooling Action Plan.

The UAE has, to its credit and interest, designated this year’s climate jamboree as the “cooling Cop”. It should make knowledge-sharing a key goal for attendees.

So far, research and policy has skewed towards the Global North’s focus on sustainable heating. Cerberus may provide a much needed bite on the backside to start thinking about sustainable cooling too.