Gaia Squarci

As noted by David Wallace-Wells in a recent New York Times Oped, the deadly heat waves endangering the health and survival of three quarters of the world population currently cannot be called “extreme”, because they are not rare anymore. In this scenario, the most powerful adaptation human beings have devised to fight the increase of heat caused by climate change is the adoption of Air Conditioning systems, whose faults are staggering from the point of view of energy consumption, household cost and greenhouse gas emissions. According to IEA, ten new ACs will be sold every second for the next 30 years, which will increase the number of ACs to 5.6 billion globally by 2050. 

I am working for a European Research Council project directed by Enrica De Cian - professor of Environmental economics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice - which studies the dynamics of AC adoption and estimates their impacts for the next decades on the energy system, the climate, and society. Her studies focus especially on the cooling gap between different social strata in tropical developing countries with a growing middle class.

In Brazil, one of the case studies, currently only 30% of families own an AC unit, while the poorest layers of the population often experience dramatic thermal discomfort. In the next 20 years the number of households owning an AC unit is projected to rise up to 85%. As a consequence, household energy needs will increase by 50% in the same time frame, together with the related expenses, and emissions.

 
I recently traveled to Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba with Jacopo Crimi, the communication officer of the above-mentioned research project, to document the criticalities of the cooling issue among different social classes, interviewing experts working in sustainable architecture, to talk about thermal injustice and possible solutions aimed at contrasting it.