The Greenhouse Gas Footprint
India has faced some of the largest temperature rises, yet has one of the lowest adoptions of air conditioners. In 2016, an Indian city, Phalodi, hit a maximum temperature of 51°C. The maximum temperature a human body can function at is 42.3°C. Yet, at the same time, nine out of ten families don’t own an air conditioner in India meaning they aren’t able to receive the cooling they need to survive.
Many families are unable to afford the air conditioner due to the machine cost, as a good air conditioner can run around $500 while the average Indian monthly salary is $300. The electricity cost also plays a factor as air conditioners use 15x the amount of electricity compared to a refrigerator.
CO2 Footprint
ACs Carbon Footprint Comes From Their Large Consumption of Electricity
Air conditioners use around 20% of the entire building sector of electricity. ACs electricity demands are expected to increase by 179% by 2050 globally. We are going to see this demand increase in places such as India and Africa with low AC adoption right now but temperatures are rising to the point that people cannot survive. Cooling is no longer going to be a commodity but a necessity.
Refrigerant Footprint
Air Conditioners Use a Refrigerant 1000-3000x More Heat Absorbent CO2
This means that people will be more willing to buy inefficient ACs which may result in more leaks of the refrigerant. This brings us to the second part of the giant greenhouse gas footprint ACs have. ACs use a refrigerant called hydrofluorocarbons. They phased out Chlorofluorocarbons as they aren’t harmful to the ozone layer, BUT they are an extremely heat-absorbing greenhouse gas. Hydrofluorocarbons do a good job in an AC sense of trapping heat as it is 1000-3000x more heat absorbent compared to CO2, but when this gas is released into the atmosphere, that accelerates this warming process. With the footprint of ACs, they are heating up the Earth, therefore increasing the demand for using an AC.