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We got one late last year. They used to be very, very rare in the Netherlands, but after record breaking heat over several summers, people had enough and bought air conditioners. Modern dutch houses are well insulated, but you can only keep the heat out for so long. And once the heat does get in, it’s staying in. So, air conditioners to the rescue. Shit’s unliveable otherwise.
We’ve got solar panels, so we can effectively run the air conditioners for free as long as the sun’s out. Same thing with others on our block who have them.
Now, there’s people who will tell you that you shouldn’t use aircon, that it’s bad for the environment, etc. But since we run them off solar, I’m not going to feel bad about it. I bet in ten years every house here will have them, solar or not.
Modern ACs are totally environmentally friendly, they’ve moved off the effective-but-polluting coolants they used to rely on, and otherwise they’re mostly just a fluid pump and a metal case. ACs are only terrible if you look at the bill or where the electricity comes from, so don’t feel bad, just correct the people telling you that, because it’s not even a compromise if you’re running it 100% on solar, it’s just great for you and not harmful at all
Modern ACs are totally environmentally friendly, they’ve moved off the effective-but-polluting coolants they used to rely on
Indeed that’s what I thought… that freon was banned in much of the developed world in favor of harmless alternatives. But yet the article says this:
Special refrigerant gases used in air-conditioners and refrigerators, when leaked into the atmosphere, are also potent greenhouse gases.
The projected most common modern one is propane, which sounds bad, but is about a thousand times less than our old ones. The amount of propane in an AC is also negligible compared to what even the smallest appliance that burns it would put out, by the simple fact that it is reused for the life of the AC.
As long as an AC is disposed of properly, which is far more likely to be done by someone who cares about their footprint, there’s no issue.
As long as an AC is disposed of properly
I actually like that the landfills in my area specifically won’t take refrigerators or air conditioners.
The refrigerant they are probably referring to is R134a or R410a which are much more potent greenhouse gases than CO2. But there are two things to consider:
If the system is maintained correctly, it shouldn’t lose any refrigerant, and R410a started being phased out in 2022 for other gases with a lower Global Warming Potential. One of those refrigerants is R744, which has a GWP of 1. That’s because R744 is just carbon dioxide.
The bigger issue for me is R134a. It has a lower GWP of 1430 vs ~2100 for R410a, but since R134a is used in cars, it’s a lot more likely that it will be released. Some carmakers are transitioning to R1234yf in their air conditioners, which has a GWP of less than 1.
Tl;dr: Refrigerants can cause more global warming per unit volume of gas than CO2, but it’s being worked on. Also, refrigerant typically stays inside the machine, while CO2 is emitted by lots of different processes, so it’s not a huge environmental disaster when it’s just running.
Modern dutch houses are well insulated, but you can only keep the heat out for so long. And once the heat does get in, it’s staying in. So, air conditioners to the rescue. Shit’s unliveable otherwise.
What about geothermal? Outside the city geothermal is easy enough because you can do a shallow horizontal dig.
In the city where you have very little land per house, a geothermal system requires a deep vertical dig. I wonder if being close to the water table would make that an issue. If not, then geothermal should be more energy efficient but of course the dig makes it cost prohibitive.
Or would it make sense to just dig to the water table, and directly use the ground water for cooling, then dump the warmer water back slightly more downstream. Would that work?
I suppose it’s worth mentioning that (I heard) a solar panel can be directly connected to a compressor (thus heat pump or A/C). That means no need for power regulators, inverters, batteries, etc. So that’s cool, if it’s true.
Geothermal solutions are used in The Netherlands, but solar panels are way more popular in general. A quarter of all homes here have a solar panel installation, but only around 10 percent have heat pumps/geothermal installations from what I’ve read. The average price for a 12 panel home solar installation is around 8.000 euros, whereas the average price of a full geothermal installation runs you around 28.000.
Now, both are promoted as alternative ways of heating your house, since the country’s moving away from natural gas for that purpose. But solar’s getting cheaper by the day, especially now that demand has slowed. Investing in cheap solar is preferable to geothermal from that perspective.
As for cooling, geothermal does quite well at that from what I’ve read. Supposedly it’s better at dehumidifying, and it’s a heating as well as cooling solution, compared to just cooling on older AC’s. Thing is, modern air conditioners do that as well - our home installation can be used for heating in the winter as well. I can only tell you from experience that heating and cooling with our AC units works excellent. From what I’ve read, geothermal users have high satisfaction rates as well.
I’m no expert on things like the water table, so I honestly couldn’t tell you how / what / why it would or wouldn’t work.
When I was a kid I read a wonderful book about how a lady bought a vacuum cleaner to save time cleaning her floors. Then other people saw how great it was and bought vacuum cleaners. Eventually they were so popular that a vacuum cleaner factory was built in her town. Of course they needed more electricity to run all the vacuum cleaners and the factory, so a new power plant was also built in the city. The power plant, and the vacuum cleaner factory pumped soot into the air, which dirtied all the walls and floors across the town. Eventually with more work than she used to expend sweeping, she could get her floor almost as clean as before she bought the vacuum cleaner. I have no idea what that book was called, but the message has always stuck with me, and it seems very relevant to the topic of this post.
Not if we switch to renewables…co2 emissions drop dramatically.
If we’re not all using solar, wind etc by 2050 we’re all fucked anyway (the argument could be made were already all fucked)
Here’s a question - if increased electricity use is driving up greenhouse gases, wtf are we supposed to do to solve all this?
We really need to focus on replacing our electricity infrastructure with renewable sources ASAFP. Personally, I think nuclear is the best choice, but anything is going to be better than gas or coal, and they need to be implemented NOW. In a world where widespread electrification is the end goal, electricity use is set to exponentially increase. If that’s just going to make things worse, too, we are leaving ourselves with zero options in the face of literal apocalypse.
I think nuclear is the best choice
I used to think this as well, but I’ve been so impressed with how cheap solar and wind have become, and more importantly, they’re able to be brought online extremely quickly compared to Nuclear, which takes decades.
I had hoped SMR (Small Modular Reactors) would make it more viable, but all attempts so far have ballooned in cost quite badly, and they’re taking a very long time to get off the ground, making Solar and Wind once again the most appealing option.
The increased demand from Air Conditioning in particular lends itself to Solar being the optimal solution, as A/C demand is highest during the day, where solar can really mop up.
Solar is cheap, easy to scale, easy to repair. Solar is the best option for 90% of the human population. Nuclear is an excellent option for already rich and populous countries that can afford to build and maintain it, and who also have much higher demand for electricity in the first place.
wtf are we supposed to do to solve all this?
Maybe nuclear fusion, but that’s down the line (~2030… bit late) with some skepticism.
Solar? Wind? Wave energy? Hydroelectic?
It takes having policy in place to make sure those get used instead of burning fossil fuels.
Indeed! And heat pumps, insulation, bicycles, electric bicycles, cars, busses, etc, etc. We need societal transformation.
By 2050, I’ll be 80, solidly in the “wearing a sweater in 100°F weather”.
So I’ll be doing my part.
Heh! Spring chicken! I haven’t hit that stage yet, but I’ve noticed that I’m been less able to cope with temperature extremes and even just temperature variations. There should be a support group or something. :)
It’s a vicious cycle and why even ‘just a few degrees higher average’ can unleash a rapid collapse of society as we know it. The hotter it gets, the more people will need energy to survive it, more energy means it will get even hotter.
Unless we get that energy from renewables, in which case increased A/C use wouldn’t make everything hotter.
At that point it wont matter, renewables will help but no energy transformation is without loss, by the time our energy is 100% renewables it will be too late.
We’re converting to renewable pretty darn fast man, not fast enough to completely offset the increased AC usage, but it’s fast enough that it may put a dent in it.
Like I said, it will help, just not enough.
I heard that Belgium has mandated that all new house builds must be passive homes going forward. (very cool) Can anyone confirm or deny that? Have any other regions made that forward-thinking policy?
I spoke to a real estate agent in the US who didn’t even know what a passive house was, and after I explained it he was sure that no such house existed in his whole state. I was blown away by the gross oversight.
In another US region, someone who needed a new roof said they did an exhaustive search for a roofer who could install a vegetated roof. Not a single roofer in their city or neighboring city could do that. WTF… how are people so not on the ball at this stage?
Wow. That’s just sad.
The rise of teleworking certainly doesn’t help. Quite backwards that instead of cooling one big well insulated office building you have companies sending everyone home where each individual worker heats & cools their (often uninsulated) home.
Yeah, there’s a transport/home energy use tradeoff there.
Any city that still hasn’t got their shit together & built a cycling infra in the next ~5-10 yrs should be ghost-towned. Those cities are not participating in society. Nonetheless, the burden of a car commute on the environment is shadowed by the cost of heating and cooling a house for a full day.
Heating an cooling impact is incredibly dependent on location and season. Work-from-home is lower energy at least seasonally in a lot of places.
The problem is corporations are happy to send people home all year round just to cut their own energy costs, esp. in the non-temperate climate periods when the collective on-site energy efficiency is most needed. That’s what the corporate bottom line dictates. Staff are happy to take that lifestyle at the cost of energy inefficiency. There’s no policy or mechanism anywhere to reverse that and discourage teleworking when the outdoor temp is outside temperate ranges.
pollution perpetuating more pollution. This needs to be reversed before it becomes irreversible. same for agriculture: growing crops will require a more controlled environment, which would require energy input
Bingo. And corpos vie for more tech based climate solutions instead of policy changes. They’re looking for the golden goose greenwashing tech that will make them richer.
