There are a few technologies that could help us mitigate this disaster scenario (although laws to address GHG emissions are needed to truly avoid it): - Smart

There are a few technologies that could help us mitigate this disaster scenario (although laws to address GHG emissions are needed to truly avoid it): - Smart thermostats which let utility companies cap peoples AC use - you can stop people from cooling down to room temp, keep everyone at 85 wbt instead. You can pre-cool peoples houses before the hottest point in the day (e.g. turn the temperature down to 60 in the morning and then turn the AC off and let it ride back up to 85 wbt during the heat wave). In the worst case scenario, you can shut off peoples AC and make them go to cooling shelters. - Thermal storage - traditional ice thermal storage uses glycol to freeze ice at night when the condenser temperature is really low, and then stores this ice to cool buildings during the day. The problem is that glycol systems are expensive and impractical on a small scale, so all ice thermal storage systems are huge (take a look at Chicago’s district cooling as an example). New thermal storage materials (e.g. polymer phase change materials) can be frozen/unfrozen at the evaporator temperature of existing AC systems, so they would require less retrofitting to install and could be used for smaller buildings. - More efficient dehumidifiers - ARPA-E is finding a bunch of projects around this right now. Some, like isothermal membrane-based air dehumidification, could be 4x more efficient than existing vapor compression dehumidifiers. Many other technologies, like energy recover ventilators, hybrid and adiabatic cooling towers, and inverter chillers, to name a few, are making HVAC more efficient!