Climate change 'will lead to air conditioner boom that could cause blackouts'

Climate change will drive an increase of up to 13% in the use of air conditioning in summer that could cause prolonged blackouts, a study has warned.

The research, which focused on US data but could have implications for countries in Europe, analysed projected air conditioning use in the case of a 1.5 Celsius rise in temperature or a 2 Celsius rise.

The study found that demand for air conditioning would rise by 8% in the best case scenario and by 13% in the worst case.

Human emissions have put the global climate on a trajectory to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the early 2030s, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported last year.

Without significant worldwide efforts, global temperatures will likely exceed the 2-degree Celsius threshold by the end of the century.

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The study is the first to project residential air conditioning demand on a household basis and a wide scale using data from statistically representative households across the United States, collected by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) between 2005 and 2019.

"We tried to isolate just the impact of climate change," said Renee Obringer, an environmental engineer at Penn State University and lead author of the study. "If nothing changes, if we, as a society, refuse to adapt, if we don't match the efficiency demands, what would that mean?"

Technological improvements in the efficiency of home air conditioning appliances could supply the additional cooling needed to achieve current comfort levels after a 2-degree Celsius global temperature rise without increased demand for electricity, the study found.

Increased efficiency of 1% to 8% would be required.

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Susanne Benz, a geographer and climate scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who was not involved in the research, said: "It's a pretty clear warning to all of us that we can't keep doing what we are doing or our energy system will break down in the next few decades, simply because of the summertime air conditioning."

The heaviest air conditioning use with the greatest risk for overloading the power grid comes during heat waves, which also present the highest risk to health.

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The researchers warned that without enough capacity to meet demand, energy utilities may have to stage rolling blackouts during heatwaves to avoid grid failure, like California's energy providers did in August 2020 during an extended period of record heat.

Obringer said: "We've seen this in California already - state power suppliers had to institute blackouts because they couldn't provide the needed electricity."

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