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I have heard enough discussions about the Paris Olympics budget that I would consider that A/C was not provided for purely cost reasons. I do agree myself that

by vladms 2y ago

I have heard enough discussions about the Paris Olympics budget that I would consider that A/C was not provided for purely cost reasons. I do agree myself that A/C is a luxury in most cases (at least in Paris) and many other things that would help the environment should be done before installing that.

sunshowers 2y ago
This is a common belief but is actually not true. Heating is a necessity, and resistive heating is a very inefficient use of electricity. Heat pumps (using energy to pump heat up a temperature gradient) yields far greater coefficients of performance. Once you have a heat pump, you might as well use it to also cool things down in the summer. All of France takes a break in August because it's too hot to work. This is only going to get worse with climate change.
- vladms 2y ago
  Not sure what is "no true" from my comment as you were not specific, but at least to the suggestion of installing heat-pumps in Paris, this will be a much bigger investment than putting "some A/C". I don't think such an investment is more beneficial than (for example) transforming more of the side street parking to bike lanes (which seems to be what is happening). What is too hot for you? For me an average a mean high temperature of 25 deg Celsius in August is reasonable (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Paris).
  - sunshowers 2y ago
    My point is just that viewing A/C as a luxury leads to more energy use. Yes, I think Europe needs to have a large scale deployment of heat pumps — not only for the climate benefits but also to lower dependency on Russian oil and gas. A/C just comes along for the ride as a thing that makes lives better. New developments like the Olympic village should all have heat pumps. I would aim for maybe 95-97% of expected weather to be covered.

by vladms 2y ago

sunshowers 2y ago

This is a common belief but is actually not true. Heating is a necessity, and resistive heating is a very inefficient use of electricity. Heat pumps (using energy to pump heat up a temperature gradient) yields far greater coefficients of performance. Once you have a heat pump, you might as well use it to also cool things down in the summer. All of France takes a break in August because it's too hot to work. This is only going to get worse with climate change.

vladms 2y ago
Not sure what is "no true" from my comment as you were not specific, but at least to the suggestion of installing heat-pumps in Paris, this will be a much bigger investment than putting "some A/C". I don't think such an investment is more beneficial than (for example) transforming more of the side street parking to bike lanes (which seems to be what is happening). What is too hot for you? For me an average a mean high temperature of 25 deg Celsius in August is reasonable (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Paris).
- sunshowers 2y ago
  My point is just that viewing A/C as a luxury leads to more energy use. Yes, I think Europe needs to have a large scale deployment of heat pumps — not only for the climate benefits but also to lower dependency on Russian oil and gas. A/C just comes along for the ride as a thing that makes lives better. New developments like the Olympic village should all have heat pumps. I would aim for maybe 95-97% of expected weather to be covered.