Abstract
Global climate change increases heat loads in urban areas causing health and productivity risks for millions of people. Inhabitants in tropical and subtropical urban areas are at especial risk due to high population density, already high temperatures, and temperature increases due to climate change. Air conditioning is growing rapidly, especially in South and South-East Asia due to income growth and the need to protect from high heat exposures. Studies have linked increased total hourly electricity use to outdoor temperatures and humidity; modeled future predictions when facing additional heat due to climate change, related air conditioning with increased street level heat and estimated future air conditioning use in major urban areas. However, global and localized studies linking climate variables with air conditioning alone are lacking. More research and detailed data is needed looking at the effects of increasing air conditioning use, electricity consumption, climate change and interactions with the urban heat island effect. Climate change mitigation, for example using renewable energy sources, particularly photovoltaic electricity generation, to power air conditioning, and other sustainable methods to reduce heat exposure are needed to make future urban areas more climate resilient.
Highlights
Global climate change will increase outdoor and indoor heat loads, and may harm health and impair work productivity for millions of people [1,2,3,4]
From this we suggest that together with hourly meteorological and Air conditioning (AC) electricity consumption and penetration data, Floor Area Ratio (FAR) can be used to estimate and calculate current consumption and future growth in electricity consumption due to AC in urban areas
Air conditioning as a technical solution to protect urban populations from excessive heat exposure creates the challenge of increasing electricity consumption, especially in urban areas
Summary
Global climate change will increase outdoor and indoor heat loads, and may harm health and impair work productivity for millions of people [1,2,3,4]. Air conditioning (AC) is a common technical solution to problems of increasing temperatures and includes both temperature and humidity control of the indoor air [5].growing AC use increases electricity consumption and climate change, if the energy source is not renewable, contributes to the urban heat island effect and ambient heat exposure. The role of cities in sustainable development has become more prominent due to the growing urban population worldwide [6]. The academic study of sustainable development holds a variety of perspectives and approaches. It includes a number of policies and practices grounded from communal agrarian utopianism to large-scale capital-intensive consumer market development. To find a sustainable way to provide the energy requirements for urban AC is a major challenge
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