Air-conditioning and the adaptation cooling deficit in emerging economies

Abstract

Increasing temperatures will make space cooling a necessity for maintain comfort and protecting human health, and rising income levels will allow more people to purchase and run air conditioners. Here we show that, in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Mexico income and humidity-adjusted temperature are common determinants for adopting air-conditioning, but their relative contribution varies in relation to household characteristics. Adoption rates are higher among households living in higher quality dwellings in urban areas, and among those with higher levels of education. Air-conditioning is unevenly distributed across income levels, making evident the existence of a disparity in access to cooling devices. Although the adoption of air-conditioning could increase between twofold and sixteen-fold by 2040, from 64 to 100 million families with access to electricity will not be able to adequately satisfy their demand for thermal comfort. The need to sustain electricity expenditure in response to higher temperatures can also create unequal opportunities to adapt.

Inequality in the availability of residential air conditioning across 115 US metropolitan areas

“…Disparities in residential AC prevalence differ across geographies ( 12 , 24 ) with underlying variations in the climatic, socioeconomic, and infrastructural determinants of adoption ( 44 , 33 , 45 ). US metro counties with high AC prevalence are estimated to have the lowest levels of heat vulnerability ( 12 ), which we corroborate.…”

“…Second, while housing characteristics are significant determinants of residential AC adoption ( 44 , 32 ), our empirical model includes a limited subset of housing attributes that potentially predict household AC. In addition to housing type (single or multifamily), tenure (own or rent), and building age, detailed building properties, such as size (square footage of living space), insulation, and building quality have been shown to correlate with AC adoption ( 57 , 45 ). Other physical attributes such as construction material, solar orientation, roof and wall albedo, and window-to-wall ratio modify indoor heat exposure and vulnerability ( 58 ), potentially indicative of the likelihood of having AC.…”

Cooling access and energy requirements for adaptation to heat stress in megacities

“…While this AC penetration model is widely used at national scale, its application to individual cities might come with some shortcomings. Prior studies assessed urbanization as one of the main drivers of AC uptake (Andrijevic et al 2021;Pavanello et al 2021), and AC adoption curves might be steeper in urban areas compared to national averages, entailing potential slight underestimation in this study.…”

Potential changes in cooling degree day under different global warming levels and shared socioeconomic pathways in West Africa

“…This is also highlighted in the discussion of the study of Biardeau et al (2020), referring to Bangladesh, where electricity access now reaches 80%, up from 20% in 2000. Moreover, recent projections of air conditioning showed southern and western African countries will achieve significant penetration by 2050 (Davis et al 2021, Falchetta andMistry 2021). Several countries in West Africa such as Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria will depict several-fold increases in air conditioning according to recent study projections (Davis et al 2021).…”