Study Overview
Air conditioning adoption is increasing dramatically worldwide as incomes rise and average temperatures go up. Using daily temperature data from 14,500 weather stations, we rank 219 countries and 1,692 cities based on a widely used measure of cooling demand called total cooling degree day exposure.
Study Results
India, China, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Brazil, Bangladesh and the Philippines all have more total cooling degree day exposure than the United States—a country that uses 400 terawatt-hours of electricity annually for air conditioning.
Journal Publication: Biardeau, L.T., Davis, L.W., Gertler, P. et al. Heat exposure and global air conditioning. Nat Sustain 3, 25–28 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0441-9
News & media
Heat Exposure and Global Air Conditioning
December 9, 2019
There is, of course, a wide gap between “potential” and “realization”. Air conditioning is still uncommon in most low-and middle-income countries. As incomes rise, will these countries adopt air conditioning to the same degree as the United States? How fast? How many air conditioners? These questions have significant implications not only for electricity demand in emerging markets, but also for global carbon dioxide emissions, and thus future changes in global temperatures.