Inequalities in Global Residential Cooling Energy Use to 2050
Climate change is increasing heat exposure, leading to rising AC adoption with stark inequalities across countries and households.
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We use a large multi-country household survey dataset to empirically model of the determinants of residential air conditioning (AC) ownership, and, conditional on AC adoption, households' consumption of electricity for cooling. We then use the fitted statistical models to project mid-century AC prevalence and cooling electricity use at fine spatial resolution across the world.
Air conditioning (AC) is the main technology available at large scale that will enable households to adapt to ambient high temperature extremes that will worsen with climate change. We quantify, at the global scale, the increases in residential AC adoption (household purchase and installation of more, and/or higher capacity AC units) and utilization (household consumption of additional electricity to operate these appliances for cooling indoor spaces) necessary for adaptation circa 2050, and the increases CO2 emissions as a result.
Intersecting socio-demographic transformations and warming climates portend increasing worldwide heat exposures and health sequelae. Cooling adaptation via air conditioning (AC) is effective, but energy-intensive and constrained by household-level differences in income and adaptive capacity. Using statistical models trained on a large multi-country household survey dataset (n = 673,215), we project AC adoption and energy use to mid-century at fine spatial resolution worldwide. Globally, the share of households with residential AC could grow from 27% to 41% (range of scenarios assessed: 33-48%), implying up to a doubling of residential cooling electricity consumption, from 1220 to 1940 (scenarios range: 1590-2377) terawatt-hours per year, emitting between 590 and 1,365 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e). AC access and utilization will remain highly unequal within and across countries and income groups, with significant regressive impacts. Up to 4 billion people may lack air-conditioning in 2050. Our global gridded projections facilitate incorporation of AC’s vulnerability, health, and decarbonization effects into integrated assessments of climate change.