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New tech can make air-conditioning less harmful to the planet
- domoregood 2y agohttps://archive.is/OICux https://archive.is/OICux
- TrainedMonkey 2y agoPassive cooling is coming along too - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zW9_ztTiw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zW9_ztTiw8
- gorpy7 2y agoThe article didn’t mention them but I’ve been following Montana Technologies and their AirJoule product which also uses MOFs- pretty interesting stuff.
- acyou 2y agoI would rephrase this article as "Dehumidification Is All You Need". We should also Paint Everything White, Glaze and Cover the Windows, Roman House, and Plant Shade Trees. If it's too hot, people should really also move to higher latitudes and elevations. No, seriously.
- khafra 2y agoAt higher lattitudes and elevations, it often gets too cold; and remediating that takes more energy than A/C. Perhaps we could simply build double the housing and infrastructure we currently have, and move whole populations north/up and south/down seasonally, to save energy?
- Qwertious 2y agoEnergy is dirt-cheap in the long run (at least at midday), it's energy storage that will be hard. And it just so happens that storing heat is easier than storing cold. Cold requires an air conditioner instead of just resistive heating, and you can't go down more than 300ish degrees, and realistically you're not using liquid nitrogen let alone liquid helium. Meanwhile, generating heat with resistive heating is literally just the cost of wires. High latitudes are ideal here, as you lose temperature without losing sunlight. Wind speeds are generally higher too.
- khafra 2y agoIf energy production--including its externalities--is too cheap to meter, all this is moot. However, if you're worried about time-shifting renewables, please note that it tends to get hot when the sun is shining. You can observe this in Florida (I kept my house at 73 cheaply with my solar panels), and California, where the duck curve has gone negative.
- bluefirebrand 2y agoI think it's also worth noting that people can survive in a colder temperature range with warm clothes and insulation much more easily than hot temperature ranges Hot environments start becoming potentially lethal at around 40 degrees Celsius Cold environments are easily survived with decent clothes and coverings down to -40C, and can go much colder with specialized layers and personal warming Heat is just plain more dangerous for humans
- chongli 2y agoMeanwhile, generating heat with resistive heating is literally just the cost of wires. And the electric current you need to run through them. Resistive heating has a COP of 1.0 by definition. A modern, cold climate, air source heat pump can achieve a COP of 4.0 or higher at temperatures down to -15C (5F). This means 1/4 the winter heating bill for heat pumps over resistive electric. Where I live (Canada) the winter heating bills are far higher than the summer cooling bills, despite our humid summers with heat waves reaching 30C+ (86F) for weeks at a time.
- rpgwaiter 2y agoI’ve always wondered why heat pumps don’t also have a water line attached. We water cool servers because water is a much better conductor than air, and cold tap is usually colder than outside air. We should be misting tap onto the condenser to make it significantly more efficient and effective at cooling unless I’m missing something.
- jandrewrogers 2y agoPeople do sometimes do this when the circumstances make it feasible. I think the most common version of this is to couple a heat pump to a swimming pool.
- OptionOfT 2y agoWater is the problem. For maximum efficiency you want water to change phase. So a thin layer of water that can evaporate and then extract maximum heat. But in places like CA, South AZ, etc water is scarce and very hard. And since you want it to evaporate it'll leave lime scale behind. Doesn't mean it isn't done. Hospitals do it in Phoenix. But it's cheaper to just turn up the nearby nuclear plant.
- citrin_ru 2y agoA household uses a non- negligible amount of hot water . Why not to use AC waste heat to pre-heat water and store it in a tank? It probably won’t be hot enough but it would take less energy to heat this warm water to an exact temperature.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoYep, since heat pump water cylinders already exist, this is most obvious next step.
- wolvesechoes 2y agoI don't know about US, but it is not a novelty in Europe to use heat pump to prepare hot water and cool the air in a house at the same time. It is just that such designs are much more expensive than simple AC units or air-to-air heat pumps.
- anovikov 2y agoIs it really a problem? A/C is the dumb easiest thing to solve with renewable energy. We need most A/C when it's day and the sun is shining - much less need when it's dark or cloudy - so consumption almost matches supply of solar power. With some shift at the evening... yeah between some 6pm and 9pm there's still a lot of A/C demand but little to no solar... but this is the lowest hanging fruit for the most minimal amounts of deployed battery storage.
- jochem9 2y agoProper insulation and blasting the AC during solar excess could also be a way to shift the evening demand.
- cwalv 2y agoIt's only a problem if you're into virtue signalling your green cred by "swearing off air conditioning." There is a ton of low hanging fruit to make cooling more efficient, but people just don't consider it worth the cost (esp considering the opportunity cost vs thinking about almost anything else).
- hiddencost 2y agoYou must live in a deeply hostile world if you think that's how people function.
- t-writescode 2y agoin the PNW, where a lot of people live in condos, it is not unheard of for HOAs (which basically all condos have) to be against the more efficient air conditioners and to force everyone to use the lowest efficiency inside-house, single or dual hose ones.
- anovikov 2y agoWhy? Do they make a commission on electricity bills?
- jlmorton 2y agoAC is not harmful to the planet, carbon-based sources of energy are. The ideological framing of the degrowth movement is all around us.
- scheme271 2y agoThe energy source for AC is a big issue but the refrigerant gas in most AC units cause issues for the ozone and for global climate change.
- s17tnet 2y agoIs this still true in 2024? AFIK, modern ( everything after 2010) ACs, pumps and refrigerator use ozone neutral gas like HFC.
- sl-1 2y agoIt is still true, most common refrigerants still have quite high GWP [1]. Not as bad as in the 70's, but the transition to neutral gasses is not ready yet. And then there is also all the old installed systems still running. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Common_refrigerants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Common_refrigerant...
- himinlomax 2y agoIt says right in the table that propane only has 3.3 times the potential of CO₂. That's in fact quite low for the use.
- hannob 2y agoHFCs are amongst the most damaging climate gases. It's a very unfortunate outcome of phasing out CFCs that they have in many instances been replaced by powerful greenhouse gases. HFCs are slowly phased out as well, but there are still a lot of harmful gases out there.
- quonn 2y ago
- golol 2y agoI don't like CO2 emissions being framed as harming the planet. They harm the human economy in the long run.
- KingMob 2y agoIs the human economy happening on some other planet I'm not aware of?
- Tade0 2y agoCO2 is highly soluble in water - on the order of one unit volume per one unit volume at standard pressure. This has been having devastating effects on ocean life.
- vladms 2y agoCO2 emissions in excess compared to recent time (what seems to be happening) "harm" the natural equilibrium with the result that some (many) things on the planet (humans but not only) can't adapt fast enough. If you consider the planet just as a big rock orbiting the star, doubt that anything we can do at this point will make a difference.
- Tarsul 2y agoThe framing should be that CO2 emissions destroy the very foundations of our life.
- rlpb 2y agoThat's exactly what they said about oxygen emissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
- maxerickson 2y agoAh yes, the majestic human goal of paving the way for whatever comes next. I suppose Singularitarians have that goal, but I don't think they see pushing the environment away from human beneficial conditions as meaningful progress.