Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The interplay of a warming climate and socio-demographic transformations will increase global heat exposure. Assessing future use and impacts of energy-intensive appliances for indoor thermal adaptation is therefore a crucial policy goal. Here we train statistical models on multi-country household survey data (n = 480,555) to generate global gridded projections of residential air-conditioning (AC) uptake and use. Our results indicate that the share of households owning AC could grow from 26% to a scenario median of 38% by 2050, implying a doubling of residential AC electricity consumption, to 925 TWh/yr. This growth will be highly unequal both within and across countries and income groups, with significant regressive impacts. Up to 4.5 billion heat-exposed people may lack AC access in 2050. Outcomes will largely depend on socio-economic development and climate change pathways. Our gridded projections can support the modelling of the impacts of residential AC on decarbonization pathways and health outcomes.
Source: Nature Communications
Language: English
Subfield: Building and Construction
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $6,790
Awards: Assessing Climate Change Risk in EUrope, A MULTI-MODEL, MULTI-SCALE RESEARCH PROGRAM IN STRESSORS, REPONSES, AND COUPLED SYSTEMS DYNAMICS AT THE ENERGY-WATER-LAND NEXUS, G2718608389, UNDERSTANDING MULTISTRESSOR AND MULTISCALE DRIVERS OF FEEDBACKS, CASCADING FAILURES, AND RISK MANAGEMENT PATHWAYSWITHIN COMPLEX MSD SYSTEMS, G434337789, G4476110754, G5801475309, G5830627093, A MULTI-MODEL, MULTI-SCALE RESEARCH PROGRAM IN STRESSORS, REPONSES, AND COUPLED SYSTEMS DYNAMICS AT THE ENERGY-WATER-LAND NEXUS, UNDERSTANDING MULTISTRESSOR AND MULTISCALE DRIVERS OF FEEDBACKS, CASCADING FAILURES, AND RISK MANAGEMENT PATHWAYSWITHIN COMPLEX MSD SYSTEMS
OpenAlex ID: W4402580812