For those living in MENA countries, having air conditioners (AC) in their homes is as essential as having refrigerators, TVs, and furniture. But running ACs during hot weather can quadruple monthly electricity bills compared with the rest of the year. 

According to Synergy Companies, an energy and water efficiency contractor, cooling systems generally consume 40% to 50% of the average household’s electricity. The second most energy-intensive devices are water heaters, which account for 14% to 18%.  

Generating enough electricity to power more ACs running longer hours will require burning more fossil fuels. In Egypt, for example, around 79% of electricity generation relies on natural gas. 

That further damages the environment, an often-overlooked consequence of AC use. “When people think about environmental impacts that need to be tackled, it’s very rare that people think about cooling services,” Shelie Miller, an environmental engineer at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, told Knowledgeable Magazine. “But it is an incredibly important issue that isn’t really being addressed.” 

This “issue” is increasingly important as the world gets hotter. The National Centers for Environmental Information, a U.S. agency, said June was the 50th consecutive month in which temperatures have exceeded their 20th-century average. 

To ensure the AC market boom is sustainable, manufacturers need to rethink their technologies and approaches to reduce these devices’ power draw, thereby indirectly reducing the environmental impact.  

Stark reality 

The environmental hazards of using air conditioners came into the limelight in 2019 at the 24th U.N. Conference of the Parties. At the time, the World Economic Forum (WEF) projected that by 2050 “typical window and split units used in most homes are set to … account for 20% to 40% of the world’s remaining ‘carbon budget’ (the most that can be emitted while still keeping global warming to less than 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels).”  

Another uncomfortable reality: “Unlike renewable energy, whose cost has plunged in the past decade, energy efficiency … costs more as the cheapest methods are exhausted,” the WEF noted. Reducing costs of efficient AC systems requires increasing economies of scale, which reduce production costs per unit, the WEF explained.  

AC cooling gases are another major concern. They “often have high global warming potential,” noted Miller of the University of Michigan. “Even though we’re using a relatively small amount of refrigerants, the impact of refrigerants when they leak out into the atmosphere ends up having a major impact on climate.” 

 Currently, some governments and AC manufacturers are adopting the Kigali Amendment, announced in 2016, which aims to reduce emissions of global-warming chemicals used in today’s cooling systems by 80% by 2046.  

Solutions  

Focusing on improving the efficiency of existing AC hardware could yield significant environmental benefits, as “the compressor technology at the heart of most AC units has barely reached 14% of its theoretical maximum efficiency (with most units in the 6%-8% range).” That contrasts “with solar panels, which reached 40% of their theoretical efficiency potential or LED lighting [which topped] 70%,” noted the WEF paper.  

The forum highlighted “credible pathways to [achieve] more efficiency, both by hybridizing existing technologies and in the form of new systems being developed in labs and research centers, such as transferring heat between semiconductors, employing magnetic fields and even ejecting heat into outer space.” 

Another set of solutions involves finding new cooling gases. “Carbon dioxide … can be used as an alternative refrigerant,” noted Miller. “Unlike many common refrigerants that can have greenhouse gas potentials … any CO2 that leaks from these cooling systems has minimal warming potential.” 

Miller also stressed the importance of integrating cooling solutions into building design and construction. “The most efficient kinds of air conditioning are centralized systems that will heat entire buildings and residences,” she said. 

The problem with such solutions is that they are “often offered at a price point that is outside of the consumer’s ability to pay and which requires massive retrofits of existing buildings,” noted Miller. In most cases, they are also expensive to install in existing buildings.  

 Certification is another pathway to expanding production of more efficient ACs. “The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), … which develops international standards for testing and rating air conditioners and heat pumps, is steadily building toward more representative real-world performance evaluation approaches,” RMI, a climate energy nonprofit, noted in April. “This is reflected in ongoing development of the ISO 21280 standard, which aims to advance beyond conventional steady-state, capacity-based methods toward evaluation under native controls across varying load conditions.”  

 Implementation  

Miller highlighted two implementation tracks that could effectively reduce ACs’ high power draw from fossil-fuel stations.  

The first is “direct interventions,” where companies and research centers “come up with alternative refrigerants to replace high global warming-potential refrigerants,” said Miller.  

Alternatively, “indirect interventions” focus on “thinking more broadly about the built environment to reduce the need for air conditioning technology,” she said. “This often takes the form of better building design and reducing urban heat island effects. It can also go with varying air conditioning and refrigeration loads according to time of day and actual need.” 

Another way to make household cooling environmentally sustainable is to switch to renewable, zero-emission electricity sources. That should prove straightforward, as “air conditioning use mostly synchronizes with sunshine, with a few extra hours after the sun sets,” noted Robert Cyran, a U.S. tech columnist for Reuters Breakingviews in June. “That makes it a natural match for solar, the cheapest and most rapidly constructed source of generation.” 

Growing reliance on renewable power stations is “good news [for the cooling industry] considering most of this demand will be in developing countries that lack financial heft,” noted Cyran.  

Such implementation steps require the right infrastructure. “Designing the next generation of air conditioning systems made for real-world performance will require building stronger technical capability, expanding access to the right tools, and equipping engineers and product teams with new skills,” noted RMI.  

 Government is also vital, as “continued coordination across manufacturers, policymakers and researchers helps ensure that design practices, testing frameworks and market signals evolve together, supported by a shared understanding of real-world performance.” As this takes shape, it creates a pathway to translate technical insight into scalable solutions, making the future of cooling innovation a practical reality. 

 Challenges 

A major challenge in implementing new cooling technologies is “finding a way to scale [them],” according to the WEF. “The AC industry is dominated by a handful of large incumbent manufacturers that are simply responding to current regulatory and market signals.” 

Furthermore, “consumers care about price, brand, and look more than anything else, and regulators fail to apply much pressure with regard to efficiency standards,” the WEF added. 

The result: “AC companies typically spend more on advertising and aesthetics than they do on research and development, and focus on churning out as many low-efficiency units as they can as cheaply as possible.”[Text Wrapping Break] 

Replacing AC units with technologically superior ones might be unfeasible, as next-gen models cost significantly more. Replacing ACs can be a burden for average households, especially if they already have working units. Also, manufacturers would need to ramp up production to meet increased demand. 

Ultimately, a successful rollout of next-gen AC units requires a long-term, near-global effort. “A lot of our installed equipment has [inefficient compressors and global-warming cooling gases],” said Miller. “Even if we have alternative refrigerants … we still have this overall stock of refrigerants in our buildings, air conditioners and refrigerators that causes a major warming threat, particularly when the devices are at the end of their life.”