As I’m writing this, Europe has been suffering under a heatwave for about a week. Paris 38°C, London 33°C, Berlin 33°C, Rome 35°C, Madrid 38°C. I’m typing these words from Geneva where it’s 33°C both outside and within my apartment except in whatever room I’m running a small, mobile AC. My brain is a bit fried and my sleep quality is a bit worse than usual. Though, the situation is much worse for older people living in small city apartments. Thousands of them will die during this heatwave.
This is a policy choice.
Europe is richer and has fewer extreme heat days than many other regions.

Yet, Europe leads the world in heat deaths per capita.

A part of this is that Europe has more old people and that vulnerability to heat increases with age. However, a significant part of this story is Europe’s ideological and regulatory resistance to air conditioning.

This resistance has already led to unnecessary deaths, lower economic productivity, and worse educational outcomes. Going forward, Europe must adapt its stance on air conditioning or these problems will progressively get worse with climate change.
1. Europe is AC-poor
In most European countries only a small minority of households have air conditioning. Indeed, when it comes to AC access Europeans are not only behind North America, they’re also behind the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, as well as Central and South America.

2. Europe’s AC-poverty is a policy choice
Why does Europe have so little AC? We could start with the fact that Europe has historically enjoyed a mild climate. As such, Europe has no existing “AC culture” and adoption will slowly change as a result of climate change. However, this “natural” explanation of European AC-poverty becomes less convincing if we compare Europe to other cases with a historically mild climate, such as South Korea. As recently as 1993 South Korea had a European-equivalent AC adoption rate of 6%, a “luxury tax” on AC and misinformed cultural beliefs such as “fan death”. Today, it has one of the world’s highest AC adoption rates at 97%.
A better explanation is that European policy has strongly disincentivized installed ACs through a variety of national and local regulations. These regulations have not happened by accident, but they come from an ideology that emphasizes energy degrowth as the only viable solution to climate change. What that means in practice is that Europe has heavily prioritized insulation and passive cooling. In contrast, active cooling through an AC, even if running on clean energy, has been disincentivized because it requires energy. To illustrate what I mean, let me walk you through two examples that I’m somewhat familiar with: Paris and Geneva.
Paris: Mandated reduction of house energy consumption
France has passed a Climate and Resilience Law (2021) that requires a “Diagnostic de Performance Énergétique (DPE)”, which means all apartments are assessed by how many kWh/m²/year they consume. Based on this, they receive an energy performance certificate that rates homes from A (best) to G (worst). This energy rating comes with severe consequences:
Since August 2022 landlords have been forbidden from increasing the rent of properties classified F or G.
Starting January 2023, the worst G-rated properties (those consuming over 450 kWh/m²/year, labeled “G+”) were deemed unfit for rental, no new lease or lease renewal can be signed for those units.
All remaining G-rated rentals will be banned by 2025
All F-rated rentals will be banned by 2028
all E-rated rentals will be banned by 2034.
As of 2018, in Paris, an estimated 54% of primary residences in the private sector carry an energy grade of E, F or G. Meaning owners are under great pressure to decrease their energy usage. An installed AC unit raises the assessed kWh/m²/year, which can tip a property into a lower DPE class (for example, from E to F). So, landlords avoid installing AC to protect their DPE ratings and there is even anecdotal evidence of some owners removing old AC units to improve a property’s efficiency.
Geneva: Bureaucratic deterrence of AC installments
Based on Art. 22B the Canton of Geneva’s energy law any fixed AC requires an exceptional permit to be installed. The law mandates that a “real need” for cooling be demonstrated and that the project is designed to minimize energy use and is integrated into the building’s overall energy concept. In practice, this means that all feasible passive cooling measures (insulation, shading, natural ventilation) must be fully implemented before an AC can be considered. Only if those measures cannot ensure a minimal summer comfort, can an AC permit be sought, and even then, an additional “proof of necessity” (e.g. a medical certificate) must be provided. If you pass this hurdle, you can build an AC if you guarantee mandatory heat recovery.1
The Cantonal Energy Office of Geneva has approved about 70 energy permits for ACs per year, of which about four go to housing. That’s it. Not four thousand, not four hundred, four. Four installed ACs in a Canton with more than 500’000 inhabitants.
3. AC-poverty has significant impacts on education, productivity, and mortality
The lack of AC has the most significant impact on the elderly, however, all age-groups are affected in some form.
a) The kids learn less
Studies show reduced student test performance at temperatures above 24°C. For example, in New York, high-school exams on hot days (32°C+) had a 11% higher rate of failing grades. Similarly, data from the national college entrance exam in China shows a non-linear decrease in the probability of students to make the cut-off to first tier universities when their exam location has ambient temperatures above 26°C
European schools already avoid the hottest weeks by design. Many have long summer breaks of 6 to 14 weeks. However, summer holidays are no full substitute for AC. First, long summer holidays come at the cost of “summer learning loss”. Second, we cannot extend the summer break to be longer and longer indefinitely. For example, a UK study warns that with 2°C global warming, the most at risk English schools could see 26°C+ indoor temperatures on 50% of school days.
b) The workforce loses cognitive performance
The optimal temperature for mental work is around 22–24 °C, at higher temperatures work performance and cognitive functions gradually start to decline. For example, this study found a ca. 2% drop in productivity per degree above 25°C.
There are multiple factors that influence the relationship between temperature and cognitive performance incl. humidity, oxygen & CO2-levels, and the nature of the task. Still, a generalized temperature-cognitive performance curve looks like this:

For comparison, during the 2022 energy crisis Italy temporarily capped AC in public buildings at no lower than 27 °C. Spain temporarily required AC in offices and public venues to be set no lower than 27 °C. That’s already a mandate for close to 5% cognitive performance loss.
Moreover, most in Europe live in entirely uncooled spaces. Yet, with the shift to more home office and more remote work the lines between office space and private space are increasingly blurred. This de facto means that many remote workers need to work at temperatures of 30°C+!
c) Tens of thousands of elderly Europeans die
The exact number of Europeans that die heat-related deaths is debatable. Heat stress often worsens chronic conditions (e.g., cardiovascular), leading to indirect fatalities not always coded as “heat” deaths.
For the summer 2022, a Nature study estimated European heat-related deaths at 61’672
For the summer 2023, another Nature study estimated heat-related European deaths at 47’690
The model cited by the WHO projects as many as 187’000 heat deaths per year in Europe.
At the moment cold-related deaths still exceed heat-related deaths by nearly 10:1 in Europe. However, as the climate warns we should expect less cold-related hazards and more heat-related hazards.
Vulnerability increases exponentially with age
Despite having the highest exposure, most heat deaths are not from outdoor workers. A typical heatwave victim in Europe is an older adult with pre-existing health issues, living alone in suboptimal housing.
It is plausible that the presence or absence of AC has a decisive influence in many such cases. An analysis of heat deaths in the 2003 European heatwave summarized: “Housing characteristics associated with death were lack of thermal insulation and sleeping on the top floor, right under the roof. The temperature around the building was a major risk factor. Behaviour such as dressing lightly and use of cooling techniques and devices were protective factors.”

Maybe, some might argue some of these people have died “with heat exposure” rather than solely “due to heat exposure”. Still, during the COVID-19 pandemic we shut down pretty much all economic life largely to protect the elderly. In comparison, allowing people to own an AC seems like a very small price to pay to protect the elderly.
4. Closing the cooling gap
It’s time for Europe to make active cooling a policy priority and to close the cooling gap to the rest of the developed world.
a) AC is not a luxury but a necessity
In Europe indoor heating consumes more energy and contributes more to climate change than AC. Yet, Europeans (rightly) don’t treat indoor heating as a luxurious indulgence that should require a strict permit and is by default not included in new buildings, unless you can prove carpets and ski jackets are not helping enough and that you have a special medical need for warmth. Similarly, AC is increasingly essential for health and well-being. If you want to ban indoor ski slopes in the desert, fine, but we can’t deny people AC when thousands die during heatwaves.
Students, office workers, renters, patients, and those in retirement homes should have “the right to be cool”. Strategy documents and potentially even legislation should commit governments to try to ensure that all citizens can maintain healthy indoor temperatures as the climate warms. Passive cooling is nice, but it can be very expensive to install and in many cases it is not sufficient during a heatwave. AC is an important part of the toolkit for healthy indoor temperatures.
b) Banning installed ACs favors the adoption of less energy-efficient mobile ACs
As Europeans increasingly suffer from heat in their homes, more and more will eventually buy ACs, and if they can’t have installed ACs, they will buy mobile ACs. This is better than no AC at all but considerably worse than installed ACs on multiple dimensions.
Energy efficiency: Mobile ACs are about half as energy efficient as installed ACs or less. This is somewhat unavoidable as to keep a mobile AC running you have to keep a window partially to run the exhaust hose. So, you are trying to cool the room while simultaneously allowing hot outdoor air to leak back in through the same window gap.
Cooling power: Mobile ACs struggle to reduce temperature in a room by more than a few degrees which can still be pretty hot in some circumstances.
Indoor noise: Whereas installed AC is very quiet indoors (20-30 dB), a mobile AC in which the compressor is inside the house is in the 60+ dB range. This is pretty disruptive, especially if you’re trying to sleep.
This is part of the irony. De facto banning installed ACs forces more and more people to choose less energy efficient alternatives. To maximize energy efficiency you should go in the opposite direction and promote scale through district cooling where chilled water from central plants is provided to multiple buildings.
c) Climate change requires clean energy not less energy
There is a tension between climate change adaptation and climate change mitigation. AC is required to adapt to high temperatures. However, AC consumes a significant amount of energy, and energy production can create carbon emissions, which in turn can cause global warming. Concretely, peak energy demand in Europe is currently around 600 GW. Scaling AC access to 90% coverage in Europe might increase peak grid load by something like 80 GW (ballpark guesstimate based on Spain & Italy).
However, more energy is not inherently bad for the climate. First, it matters how clean the energy is. Counterintuitively, an individual living in France consuming 116’000 kwH (50% more energy than the average American) still has lower carbon emissions than an individual living the 2000 watt society lifestyle (17’520 kWH per year) in Germany. Second, we will simply not be able to address climate change by only prioritizing restrictions on energy demand. For example, if we want to reduce carbon emissions from transport, we also need to switch to electric vehicles. Yet, a 90% EV adoption rate in Europe requires an additional peak grid capacity on the order of 180 GW (+30%). Similarly, if our goal is to eventually remove carbon from the atmosphere at scale, this too requires a lot of clean energy.
The good news is that with focus and bottleneck-oriented policies this scaling of clean energy is very much possible. For reference, China alone added 93 GW of solar grid capacity in the month of May 2025.
Make Europe Cool Again
If you are concerned about the impacts of climate change, you should care about heatwave deaths. According to the European Environment Agency 94% of all fatalities from climate-related disasters in Europe from 1980 to 2023 have been due to heatwaves.
However, as the old saying goes: There are no natural disasters, only natural hazards. We know how to prevent many if not most of these deaths. AC will not solve everything on its own, but it is a key tool for climate adaptation, especially during heatwaves.
We can either let tens of thousands of Europeans die preventable deaths or we can increase the capacity of the European electricity grid by less than the amount of solar energy China has added in the last month and give everyone AC.
Thanks to
, & for valuable feedback on a draft of this essay. All opinions and mistakes are mineGeneva has made some modifications to the energy law recently, though they seem minor and I would want to see what actual impact they have on annually installed ACs.
One related point on AC and clean energy, AC demand pretty strictly follows solar availability. Simply installing more solar will very closely match the generation demands for AC, likely with some batteries to help in the evenings. Many countries in Europe are so far north, they may not get much solar generation in the winter months, but I suspect it easily pencils out for just supporting AC demand in the summer.
Thank you for the in-depth explaination. This topic has a personal imporance to me.
Every summer night I woke up at 3am from the heat, frantically splashing water on my head and limbs. And what's worse, most European windows didn't have a mosquito net either. So not being able to afford to close the window, I lived in total darkness after the sun went down.
I looked at Europe with so much reverence when I immigrated there from Iran. The absence of A/C made Europe look even more backward than Iran, which is not okay! Make Europe Cool (Again?)!