Air-conditioning and the adaptation cooling deficit in emerging economies.

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. Correction: https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/4665516

Author Correction: Air-conditioning and the adaptation cooling deficit in emerging economies.

The original version of this Article contained an error in Fig. 2, panel a, in which the name of one country, Indonesia, was incorrectly given in place of the correct country name, India. This has been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article

Data for: Air-Conditioning and the Adaptation Cooling Deficit in Emerging Economies, Pavanello et al 2021

These are the input data files for Pavanelle et al. 2021 (Nat Communications, in review). The replication codes and other output data (including figures and tables) are available on https://github.com/Energy-a/Comparative_paper_NatComms . The data and code will be open source upon acceptance of the article. The link to the data and code (along with some interactive results) will also be posted on the ENERGY-A website (http://www.energy-a.eu/)

The Cooling Solution. The future of air-conditioning and its impact on society.

The Cooling Solution is a photographic and scientific project that aims to show how people adapt to conditions of high temperature and humidity across geographies, cultures, and socioeconomic conditions in very different societies. Starting from the title, the term “solution” is meant to call this adaptation paradigm into question. The project examines the phenomenon of rising demand of AC in its various facets, stressing the numerous shortcomings and drawbacks, as well as the tension with the purpose that motivates its utilization, the need to protect the most fragile members of society. In the last decades, AC has established itself as the ubiquitous and intensely advertized strategy to cope with extreme heat in different parts of the world, no matter how hot or humid it may get