Climate Changed
China Is the Air Conditioning Capital of the World, With the U.S. Close Behind
- Cooling at home to make up 12% of global power use by 2050
- Aircon unit electricty demand to more than double, BNEF says
Photographer: Britta Pedersen/picture alliance via Getty Images
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Keeping homes and offices cool in the future will drive a spike in global electricity demand equivalent to the European Union’s current entire electricity consumption.
China and the U.S. accounted for 54 percent of the 1,932 terawatt-hours of electricity used by residential and commercial air conditioning in 2018, according to research from BloombergNEF. Saudi Arabia, India and Japan are the next-biggest users, rounding off a group that made up two-thirds of the demand for cooling.