A passively cooled home, architected to prevent heat buildup in the first place (especially considering neighborhood-scale solutions like tree canopy) can take zero watts of electric power to cool. I guess if you take the architecture as given, and look only at options that consume electricity, then yes there isn’t much juice to squeeze on A/C technology. There are still some options like whole-home fans which gently suck the hot air upward.
But if A/C is avoided, then you aren’t inputting extra heat into the system to run the A/C, avoiding the local heat increase. Remember if everyone is pumping heat out of their homes, that heat ends up immediately outside the homes and into the street.
The architecture is a given (in the UK at least), since we’re not building new houses at a rate that matters, and I doubt many councils can afford to make adaptation a priority. But yeah, even if it isn’t as good, some of the principle ideas can be retrofitted onto old UK stock - awnings are easy (and on the older houses may have been there a hundred years ago!), shutters aren’t that hard, air circulation can be planned, theoretically even recolouring roof tiles or adding a solar cope cage would help. They’re certainly worth trying, though landlords can and will tell you to fuck off, and even Planning Permission might butt in if their aesthetic sensibilities are offended.
Portable AC units (plus fans, because the combo is much more efficient) have the bonus of not stepping on toes, though the ones we sell in the UK are stupid and removed the outside-intake hose - which causes a large functional problem (it draws in uncontained warm air, rather defeating the point) unless you DIY a new one on.
…hm, uh, all of which is a long winded way of saying “you’re right, but the UK is damned”.
What are you comparing it to?
A passively cooled home, architected to prevent heat buildup in the first place (especially considering neighborhood-scale solutions like tree canopy) can take zero watts of electric power to cool. I guess if you take the architecture as given, and look only at options that consume electricity, then yes there isn’t much juice to squeeze on A/C technology. There are still some options like whole-home fans which gently suck the hot air upward.
But if A/C is avoided, then you aren’t inputting extra heat into the system to run the A/C, avoiding the local heat increase. Remember if everyone is pumping heat out of their homes, that heat ends up immediately outside the homes and into the street.
The architecture is a given (in the UK at least), since we’re not building new houses at a rate that matters, and I doubt many councils can afford to make adaptation a priority. But yeah, even if it isn’t as good, some of the principle ideas can be retrofitted onto old UK stock - awnings are easy (and on the older houses may have been there a hundred years ago!), shutters aren’t that hard, air circulation can be planned, theoretically even recolouring roof tiles or adding a solar cope cage would help. They’re certainly worth trying, though landlords can and will tell you to fuck off, and even Planning Permission might butt in if their aesthetic sensibilities are offended.
Portable AC units (plus fans, because the combo is much more efficient) have the bonus of not stepping on toes, though the ones we sell in the UK are stupid and removed the outside-intake hose - which causes a large functional problem (it draws in uncontained warm air, rather defeating the point) unless you DIY a new one on.
…hm, uh, all of which is a long winded way of saying “you’re right, but the UK is damned”.