20200527 Air Conditioners

Yesterday I was speaking with a close friend who bought a 1930's house in Chicago. She told me that suddenly summer has arrived, the temperature is in the 90's and it is uncomfortable inside and outside. "We want to put in central air conditioning, but that would entail a renovation of the house's electricity wiring and we can't afford that now."

Today, taking a break from working on my research into insulation materials to reduce energy consumption for cooling, I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell's podcast Revisionist History, and there was an advertisement for Flashback. One of the three episodes mentioned was about Air Conditioning - an interesting lesson about how the cooling technology had a significant effect on the US Government, population changes in the USA and future political power.

And today, I had composed a letter to real estate appraiser in the morning on how shed roofs above and disengaged from buildings are proven to keep them cooler, and use less air conditioning and electricity in the summer in sunny, hot regions.

Also today, when I checked the news today on CNN, I read an article titled 

Why it's time to redesign the old air conditioner

And today too, I composed a letter to a developer of photovoltaic (PV) power stations in Africa requesting that his company considers that when electricity becomes available, air conditioning purchases will grow. But African houses are not built for cooling, so the power system will be strained and people will be wasting money. I've designed and built houses attached to PV that use 60% less electricity for air conditioning because of coupling passive solar design with superbly insulated walls and roofs from straw bales and earth plasters. I want his company to take the next step of not just selling electricity but helping people conserve it too for economic and environmental benefits. 

 Can you imagine life without air conditioning and refrigerators? How many times a day do you come in contact with something that is kept cool in a building, or transported in a cooled container? How many people are missing out on the benefits from this most common of household appliances and the infrastructure needed to supply the electricity? What is the environmental price (think GHG's, ozone depletion) of this technology today, replacing inefficient ones (reduction of electricity use and also lots of garbage,see below) and supplying it to everyone who would want a fridge and an a/c unit (India, China and Africa)?


S. David Freeman understood all of the connections. When he was leading California's energy commissions:

Willis Carrier invented the modern air conditioner in 1902 in order to dehumidify a printing press room because the paper was getting stuck together. The unintended consequence of the dehumidification was the cooler room that made it the place the workers preferred to sit in while eating their lunch together.

Now is time to follow S.David Freeman's lead and intentionally put energy production, cooling technology and building design together.

additional resources:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/why-keeping-ourselves-cool-doesnt-have-to-mean-heating-the-planet/
http://www.comfortfutures.com/early-ac-and-architecture