SURELY no one can deny the unbridled joy of having access to an air conditioned environment during this year’s record-breaking hot summer. Whether it’s at your workplace, home, or just in the car, there can be no greater pleasure than that derived from an air conditioner as temperatures creep through the mind-melting 90s.
How strange, then, that air conditioning should be the target of such unwarranted and, quite frankly, ill-informed criticism that has been levelled at it this summer.

At the time of writing this, 83 people had died of a heatwave in California and there had been 40 heat-related deaths in Europe, mostly in France (many will recall the 2003 heat wave in which 15,000 died in that country). Medical experts would agree that most of these deaths could have been avoided if the victims had had access to air conditioning.

If global warming predictions are to be believed, then the number of deaths will increase. But still there is opposition to air conditioning from some quarters based on the assumption that it will increase the energy demand and exacerbate global warming (how strange that the general public is positively encouraged not to skimp on heating during the equally dangerous cold winters).

Of course, what the anti-air-conditioning lobby forget, is that a general warming of the environment is going to mean that the demand for heating – a far larger consumer of energy – will drop.

Their figures for air conditioning’s potential impact on the environment are also hopelessly wide of the mark, being based on worse-case scenarios and on data that is way out of date.

Recent research has shown that general increases in efficiency and the use of heat pumps and properly designed ac systems will greatly reduce the predicted impact by over 50% and possibly by over 75%. Domestically, research has also proved that an energy efficient heat pump will match or better a typical wet system, while providing the additional benefit of summer cooling.

Air conditioning is also held up as being solely responsible for power shortages and higher energy prices this summer. These are typical of some of the pieces of nonsense that have been written in our media this summer: ‘Heatwave-busting air conditioning systems have led to power shortages across the country’ and ‘a surge in demand as consumers switch on air conditioning systems in a bid to beat the heatwave’. Air conditioning is undoubtedly a contributor but I would maintain that it is refrigeration equipment, being forced to work harder, which has a greater draw on the national grid. Air conditioning, however, can be switched off at the cost of some discomfort to building occupiers, refrigeration, of course, cannot.

With a large domestic market, countries like the USA are likely to experience demand problems during a particularly hot summer but our domestic market is thought to be around 5% – surely not enough, as yet, to cause any serious problem from people “switching on” air conditioning.

Planned and “unplanned” outages aside, the power shortages are actually more to do with such factors as the privatised electricity industry doing away with the “expensive” spare capacity that we benefited from during nationalisation.

Obviously, air conditioning does have an effect, and a potentially significant effect, on energy usage but it really is getting a rotten press – and when it comes to the press there is none more rotten than The Guardian. In an article by Leo Hickman entitled ‘Is it OK ... to use air conditioning?’ (the answer, according to Mr Hickman, is “probably not”, in case you were interested) is this classic piece of ill-informed nonsense:

‘Lastly, if the heat does drive you to consider air conditioning, choose an “evaporative” unit, as opposed to a more energy-hungry “reverse-cycle” (refrigeration) unit, as well as both restricting and tightly sealing your “cool zone”’.

(Seriously, children, do not try this at home unless you really don’t like mummy’s new wallpaper or daddy wants to avoid the expense of hiring a steam stripper.)

Still, a newspaper only reflects the opinions of its target audience, which probably accounts for the reply from one of its male readers as to why he would not want air conditioning and added (those with an over-active imagination might want to skip this bit):

‘It works for me to sit naked at home, as I am doing while typing this, rather than to buy air conditioning’.

Presumably this same reader wears a coat, hat, scarf and gloves indoors in the winter to save turning his heating on.

Seriously, though, is it any wonder that the general public is so ill-informed when they are constantly exposed to editorials telling them that air conditioning is the new evil?

This lack of information and half-truths is the reason why practically no-one outside of this industry has even heard of a heat pump, let alone know what it is; why some people still believe it’s better to leave fluorescent lights on because it wastes energy keep turning them on and off; and leave an immersion heater on 24 hours-a-day because it ‘costs more to heat up the tank from cold’. There is even a general lack of understanding as to how a thermostat works. I’ve been acquainted with people who appear to believe that if they are cold, slapping the thermostat up to its highest setting will somehow make the room get warmer, quicker.

No wonder we are struggling to achieve our Kyoto targets.

Granted they draw far less current than air conditioners, but I would suggest that it is the desk top fan which has been a greater contributor to recent runs on the national grid. In just one week during July’s heatwave, Tesco’s is reported to have sold 82,000 electric fans and Comet was selling a fan every two seconds – its highest ever rate.

You wouldn’t mind, but lack of knowledge means that many of these fans are merely just moving hot fetid air around the room, even when the rooms are unoccupied. Most are wasting huge amounts of energy because no-one has told the end-user that the fan will have absolutely no effect on his well-being unless the airstream is actually directed on the person.

Wouldn’t the government, environmentalists and other parties, including this industry, be better served imparting basic energy saving knowledge to householders and businesses instead of allowing those with genuine lack of knowledge or, worse, their own vested interests, spread such misinformation?

The reality is that had man discovered cooling before he discovered fire, environmentalists would now be arguing that heating was an unnecessary luxury.

What has become obvious from these past few weeks, however, is that our industry has a considerable PR job to do to boost the perception of air conditioning. In particular, the capabilities of heat pumps and other energy efficient air conditioning systems need to be promoted far more vigorously because, make no mistake, the anti-air-conditioning lobby is currently winning the war of words.

Neil Everitt

Editor