Air-con is a fever dream in boiling Britain

Telegraph

01-07-2025

How much is a good night's sleep worth?
That's the question a growing number of Britons are pondering as they grapple with the sweltering heat. For many, the answer is the price of an air conditioner.
Between 2011 and 2022, the number of households using the cooling devices leapt from 3pc to 20pc, according to a study published by researchers this year.
Chris Michael, chief executive of Meaco, a British company that sells portable air conditioners, says the story is always the same: demand comes in dribs and drabs for most of the year, then suddenly the phone rings off the hook after a few days of scorching heat.
'If you go back to last year, where the temperature hardly went above 23C, no one was interested,' he says.
'Whereas this year, more or less by Friday, everything had sold out after two weeks. Once you get these sorts of 30C temperatures, it's like turning a tap on.'
Since he founded Meaco in 2008, the company's sales have surged from hundreds of units to more than 30,000 per year.
'To put that into context, when we started, a company was seen as a big player if they had done 1,000,' Michael adds.
As the country braces for even more heatwaves like the one seen this week, sales are likely to keep going up.
Powering up
In 2022, the mercury rose above 40C for the first time and the Met Office has warned such incidents will only become more frequent due to global heating.
Without big changes, that means more heat deaths and more weeks of discomfort, experts warn.
And with many families turning to air conditioners for relief, it also means more strain on Britain's creaking electricity grid during the summer months.
The Government is right to be nervous about the impact that rising air conditioner use could have on the electricity system.
According to one study, the devices are expected to increase power demand by 45pc by 2050.
This is likely to be most concentrated in cities, where the 'heat island' effect caused by concrete surfaces, heat-absorbing materials and the density of buildings means temperatures are a degree or two higher than elsewhere.
Worryingly, a government-backed piece of research published in 2021 pointed out that Britain's electricity system has traditionally been designed to meet peak demand during the winter months, with nuclear power stations typically having down-time for maintenance in the lower-demand summer months.
But with summers getting hotter, the research warned that national peak demand from cooling during a heatwave could be twice as high as that of an average summer week – putting considerable pressure on the grid.
'Although the UK has not yet experienced blackouts due to peak energy demand related to cooling in the summer, such peaks have occurred and have led to coal-fired power stations being brought into service,' a report by MPs on the environmental audit committee warned last year.
'Passive' cooling
The Government has responded by adopting policies designed to encourage use of 'passive' cooling measures in buildings.
In London, Labour mayor Sir Sadiq Khan's local planning rules argue that 'passive ventilation should be prioritised' and that the increased use of air conditioning is 'not desirable as these have significant energy requirements and, under conventional operation, expel hot air, thereby adding to the urban heat island effect'.
One particular headache the country has, as temperatures creep higher, is that most of our homes are not designed for the kind of cooling provided by most air conditioners.
Air conditioners come in different types, from the portable kind sold by Meaco to the fixed affairs that can be fitted to windows or mounted on walls, the latter typically connected to an outside condenser unit.
But while in other parts of the world, heating and cooling systems typically blow air into rooms, most British homes are instead fitted with central heating systems that pump water around through pipes and radiators.
These can be repurposed for cooling down houses when the mercury creeps up in summer but this can cause condensation, says Richard Lowes, a heating expert at the University of Exeter.
Instead, many homeowners get blower air conditioners installed, which typically do not require planning permission.
Heat pump headache
There are also air-to-air heat pumps that can provide cold air. But unlike air-to-water and ground-to-water heat pumps, these are not currently eligible for the Government's boiler upgrade scheme grants, worth £7,500 each.
Officials are currently consulting on whether to change this.
Historically, they have been reluctant to do so because of fears that it will result in taxpayer-funded grants paying for cooling systems that can theoretically function as heaters as well but are never used that way by owners.
'The worry is that the Government doesn't want to be subsidising air-con, which is an additional energy demand, if it isn't providing any sort of energy system value,' Lowes explains.
'If you fit a heat pump, you're reducing emissions, you're reducing demand, all of that sort of stuff.
'But the risk is that you just end up subsidising air-con systems that can, in theory, do heating and cooling but the household instead keeps their old gas or oil boiler and just uses the air conditioner for cooling.'
However, it's futile to try to stop people adopting these technologies, according to Kathryn Porter, an independent energy consultant who has air conditioning installed in her home.
'If people are getting heat pumps, they'll be able to run them in cooling mode as well,' she adds.
'It might not be ideal, because it can cause condensation, but you can't stop them from doing it. And you can't stop people just installing air conditioning either if it doesn't require planning permission.
'I think it's also worth noting that if you're telling people that the weather is an apocalypse, then in the next breath saying, 'You can't have air conditioning', I mean, it's kind of nonsense, really, isn't it?
'You can't have it both ways. This is the difference between being able to sleep and not being able to sleep, when it's weather like this.
'But as soon as people realise they can do it, you are going to have much higher [electricity] demand during the summer. And I don't think we've really thought that through.'
However, while Lowes agrees there's 'no barrier stopping you from getting it', he says it may be sensible for the Government to advocate passive cooling measures first, given that air-con units are expensive for households to run.
'The reason why governments are focusing on fabric first is because if they didn't, housebuilders would simply build buildings that were not very efficient and then throw in a very cheap air-con unit,' he adds.
'So you end up in a situation where you have a maybe a slightly cheaper house, but you have much higher bills because you need to keep it cool with electricity. Overall I don't think the Government is against air-con, but they are certainly passive about it.'
While demand for air conditioning might be new, however, one thing remains constant each summer, says Meaco boss Michael.
'What we always see is people don't prepare,' he says. 'We've seen that in all the years we've been doing it. The sales always spike once the weather has come.
'Why do people wait? There's something going on there, but I don't quite understand it.'