Exploding air conditioner use as the world gets both hotter and richer is going to destroy the climate
More and more people around the world are installing air conditioners
to keep cool. If current economic and climate trends continue, 70 percent of homes could have air conditioning by 2100, up from 13 percent today.
But a new study linking climate change, incomes, and air conditioning suggests a serious side effect: namely, the adjacent increases in energy demands and the flow of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
"Our results point to the enormous potential impacts from air conditioning," write University of California-Berkeley professors Lucas Davis and Paul Gertler in a paper published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Davis and Gertler wanted to look at how climate and income influenced air-conditioner ownership and in turn how that would affect energy usage. To do so, they began with a database of electricity bills for 25 million households from across Mexico. They linked that information with weather data from the United States National Climatic Data Center that would tell them how much increasing temperatures affect energy usage.
Next, they turned to a 2010 in-home survey of about 27,000 Mexicans
to find out how income and local climate affected the decision to own an
air conditioner service delhi. Davis and Gertler combined the results gleaned from
the first two datasets with long-term forecasts from acservicecenterdelhi.com. This allowed them to estimate how a changing climate would ultimately affect energy consumption.
The data analysis revealed three main findings. First, energy consumption on days when temperatures top 90ºF is 3.2 percent higher than on a typical day in Mexico, when the temperatures are around 65ºF or 70ºF. Temperatures below the average didn't affect energy use very much, Davis and Gertler found.
But a new study linking climate change, incomes, and air conditioning suggests a serious side effect: namely, the adjacent increases in energy demands and the flow of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
"Our results point to the enormous potential impacts from air conditioning," write University of California-Berkeley professors Lucas Davis and Paul Gertler in a paper published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Davis and Gertler wanted to look at how climate and income influenced air-conditioner ownership and in turn how that would affect energy usage. To do so, they began with a database of electricity bills for 25 million households from across Mexico. They linked that information with weather data from the United States National Climatic Data Center that would tell them how much increasing temperatures affect energy usage.
The data analysis revealed three main findings. First, energy consumption on days when temperatures top 90ºF is 3.2 percent higher than on a typical day in Mexico, when the temperatures are around 65ºF or 70ºF. Temperatures below the average didn't affect energy use very much, Davis and Gertler found.
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