UK buildings must adapt without air con against global warming – report
The Paris Agreement in 2015 set the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5C.
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Your support makes all the difference.Buildings in the UK “act like greenhouses” and must be adapted immediately as the country faces extreme temperatures if global warming reaches 2C, researchers have warned.
But measures must not include air conditioning, which could lead to a “vicious cycle” of high energy consumption to make people feel cooler inside while making the world outside hotter.
Research conducted at the University of Oxford found, of countries with more than five million inhabitants in 2020, Switzerland and the UK would see their relative demand for people needing to cool down rise by 30%, as they would face a greater number of days with extremely high temperatures.
Other countries in the ‘Global North’, such as Norway (28%), Finland (28%) and Canada (24%), were also among the top 10 increases, while eight of those 10 countries were located in Europe.
It has huge implications for public health and all sustainable development goals, including livelihoods, infrastructure, education, poverty and food and nutrition
The findings come as large parts of southern Europe have faced sweltering temperatures over recent days, brought about by the Cerberus heatwave.
Dr Radhika Khosla, associate professor and leader of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Cooling, said: “[The findings] are very significant. Because it’s a relative change, it indicates that the preparedness of these countries to be able to respond is currently very low.
“It has huge implications for public health and all sustainable development goals, including livelihoods, infrastructure, education, poverty and food and nutrition.”
The report concludes that there is now a “need for immediate, unprecedented and localised adaptation”, as small increases in global warming continue to be marked.
The energy required for cooling by 2050 is predicted to be equivalent to the combined electricity capacity of the United States, European Union and Japan in 2016, the report says, with air conditioners largely contributing to this output.
This could ... lock us into a vicious cycle of burning fossil fuels to make feel cooler while making the world outside hotter
Dr Khosla said: “Without adequate interventions to promote sustainable cooling, we are likely to see a sharp increase in the use of energy guzzling systems, such as air conditioning.
“This could further increase emissions and lock us into a vicious cycle of burning fossil fuels to make feel cooler while making the world outside hotter.”
She said solutions for these demands would have to be considered at different levels, adding: “At the policy level, it’s really important to think nationally about policy solutions in terms of resilience and adaptation, net zero strategies and the Heat and Buildings Strategy and how sustainable cooling can find its way into these high-level documents.
“At the level of the urban, it’s thinking about what kind of measures to put in place. Right now, the built environment in the UK is designed to keep the heat in, not out, and the building stock in the UK is one of the oldest in the world.”
Dr Khosla said natural or artificial shading, improving ventilation and reflective paint all represented alternative adaptations to air conditioners.
But right now, our buildings act like greenhouses ... Our buildings are exclusively prepared for the cold seasons
Dr Jesus Lizana, co-lead author of the report, said: “If we adapt the built environment in which we live, we won’t need to increase air conditioning.
“But right now, in countries such as the UK, our buildings act like greenhouses – no external protection from the sun in buildings, windows locked, no natural ventilation and no ceiling fans. Our buildings are exclusively prepared for the cold seasons.”
The study used 2,100 global climate simulations for mean temperature across three global warming scenarios – historical (2006–2016), 1.5C and 2C above pre-industrial levels.
Members of the United Nations signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, an international treaty with the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5C, but the report says this target is “increasingly out of reach”.
Asked about the Paris Agreement global warming target, Dr Khosla said: “I think the aspiration that we would stay within 1.5C limit is seeming quite unlikely. It doesn’t seem like we have any credible pathway.”