We need much more medium and high density housing, exclusively low density is unsustainable.
That housing needs to be habitable, part of that is keeping it between 15 & 25 degrees indoors.
Unfortunately once average temperatures exceed 25, there is no way to make this happen without moving the hot air back out of the building, via a heat pump (which is what AC is).
Energy wise, it can be powered by solar quite effectively as typically solar output scales somewhat linearly with air conditioning demand. Also, particularly in this country, a heat pump would also replace the gas or electric boiler used in winter, which with panels would be dramatically better for the environment.
The heating-the-local-area-thing only really applies in a meaningful way to industrial air conditioning where there’s a lot of equipment inside the building creating heat. In most residential situations you’re effectively just stopping new heat from coming in.
Along side this, I can’t believe that collectively we don’t heat buildings. What’s the point of 100 apartments each maintaining an inefficient little boiler rather than a single big efficient boiler for the whole building (or maybe 2 so that there’s then contingency)
We need much more medium and high density housing, exclusively low density is unsustainable.
That housing needs to be habitable, part of that is keeping it between 15 & 25 degrees indoors.
Unfortunately once average temperatures exceed 25, there is no way to make this happen without moving the hot air back out of the building, via a heat pump (which is what AC is).
Energy wise, it can be powered by solar quite effectively as typically solar output scales somewhat linearly with air conditioning demand. Also, particularly in this country, a heat pump would also replace the gas or electric boiler used in winter, which with panels would be dramatically better for the environment.
The heating-the-local-area-thing only really applies in a meaningful way to industrial air conditioning where there’s a lot of equipment inside the building creating heat. In most residential situations you’re effectively just stopping new heat from coming in.
Along side this, I can’t believe that collectively we don’t heat buildings. What’s the point of 100 apartments each maintaining an inefficient little boiler rather than a single big efficient boiler for the whole building (or maybe 2 so that there’s then contingency)
collective heating strategy? that sounds socialist 🫠
Haha, guilty!
They do it on the continent (or at least I’ve seen it work in Berlin). It seems such an obvious win
And give the ability to collectively bargain on energy prices, boiler insurance, and repairs?
Not a chance! There’s too much money to be made making sure everybody is isolated and alone.