Independent Delves Deep Into Air Conditioning

Air conditioning, as we know, has become essential in numerous environments around the world and in other places, it's merely an aesthetic addition to place that is - well - cool enough.

But in America, needless air con use is becoming a bit of an issue where air conditioning guzzles 15% of total American energy consumption, higher than any other country, using the same amount of fossil fuel as the whole of Africa employs for all its energy needs.

While British air conditioning is a much smaller scale due to temperature and the fact that it's generally a not such a societal "must-have", its use is still set to grow by 50% over the next 20 years, according to the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE).

"Air conditioning's environmental damage is not limited to emissions of greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting chemicals," says writer Stan Cox, whose book Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World is generating a buzz in America. "Lavish deployment of indoor climate control may indeed make it possible for us to live anywhere on the planet, but is that wise?"

"It's a subject which people haven't thought about for a long time. When you look at the technologies that have changed our world over 50 years, like cars, and computers, and TV, we have debated their costs and benefits. But air conditioning has been humming in the background the whole time."

As far as the UK is concerned, "The air conditioning service industry uses an equation developed in the 1960s," says Fergus Nicol, deputy director of the low energy architecture research unit at London Metropolitan University. "It allows engineers to calculate the required temperature for air conditioning by inputting data concerning the size of a building, what clothes the engineers expect people to be wearing, and so on. But we've done research by asking people inside buildings what they feel. And what we've found is, people generally adapt to the conditions they are put in without the need for cooling. They can change what they are wearing, for example. It might sound obvious, but it is not factored into engineers' thinking."