As temperatures climb across Europe year after year, a question is becoming harder to ignore: why do so few homes have air conditioning?
The contrast with the United States is striking. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), nearly 90 per cent of US homes have air conditioning, compared with only around 20 per cent across Europe. That gap is now drawing attention as heat waves become longer, stronger and more frequent across the continent.
The answer lies partly in history. For decades, much of Europe simply did not experience the kind of sustained summer heat that made air conditioning a necessity.
“In Europe… we simply don’t have the tradition of air conditioning… because up to relatively recently, it hasn’t been a major need,” Brian Motherway, head of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Inclusive Transitions at the IEA, was quoted as saying by CNN.
As a result, air conditioning was often viewed as a luxury purchase rather than an everyday household appliance. Higher electricity prices in many European countries have also made cooling systems more expensive to run.
Buildings Designed For A Different Climate
Architecture has played a major role, too. Many homes in southern Europe were built to stay cool naturally, with thick walls, smaller windows and layouts that encourage airflow. These design features helped residents manage summer temperatures without relying on mechanical cooling. Elsewhere, however, buildings were never designed with extreme heat in mind.
“We haven’t been in the habit … of thinking about how we stay cool in the summer. It really is a relatively recent phenomenon,” Motherway said.
The Climate Dilemma
There is another reason Europe has been cautious. Air conditioners consume large amounts of electricity and release heat outdoors. A study examining AC use in Paris found widespread usage could raise outdoor temperatures by around 2 to 4 degrees Celsius.
That creates a policy challenge for governments trying to meet climate targets. Spain, for example, introduced rules in 2022 requiring air conditioning in public spaces to be set no lower than 27 degrees Celsius to reduce energy use.
Still, demand is rising rapidly. An IEA report projects that the number of air-conditioning units in the European Union could reach 275 million by 2050, more than double the 2019 level.
Richard Salmon, director of the Air Conditioning Company, said residential demand has surged. “Over the last five years, residential enquiries have more than tripled. This heatwave in particular has sent things through the roof… People just can’t function when they’re boiling at 3 am,” he told CNN.
According to the news outlet, experts such as University of Oxford associate professor Radhika Khosla warn that relying heavily on fossil fuel-powered cooling risks creating “a vicious cycle of worsening climate change.”
