It's not a good look that the UK seemingly isn't installing air conditioning, decarbonizing heating, or adopting electric vehicles. Efficiency is good after you have high living standards but the UK should probably focus on growth first.
Air conditioning is a weird one, because it’s only been necessary in residential properties for a couple of years, and really still only necessary for a couple of days a year, so a fixed installation isn’t cost effective. Portable units are becoming more popular.
AC has been a requirement in most commercial premises for years. Decades, perhaps.
From a pedantic point of view, it is quite literally the exact same as an AC. Air conditioners are literally heat pumps.
Common installations reuse the wet systems we have and are air to water, which was until recently the only thing the grants covered (and now it’s still lower for a2a).
Most importantly it's not the same in the way of me not feeling the chill. It's stupid, as I know the house is cooler than the outsides, but the actual split system delivers the cold air right to where I feel it and this thing just makes the ambient temperature down to 25c without me even noticing.
I don't want to know what it costs to install (I got it with the house), but split system costed lol nothing in eastern european dollars and took some guys less than half a day and zero permits to install too. For better or worse the heat pump doesn't live in the same locale I had that.
This is more like what they're talking about, but they do come in a lot of shapes and sizes and can be more or less integrated into central systems.
Like, sure, but the word has a specific and a general meaning, conventional use is only the specific meaning.
With an AC the advantage is that the condensate is forming inside the AC when cooling the air.
Although you could pipe cool water through the radiators, it's an ineffective form of cooling compared to blown-air systems, and retro-fitting a blown-air system is much more costly than a heating-only heat pump.
Once room and floor temperature match, condensation doesn't occur anymore as long as you keep it running.
However it will not cool like an A/C unit, only something like 5°C reduction. This can be enough to get a decent night's sleep during a summer heatwave.
While our house is relatibvely small and we kept the units (which also do heating as well) confined to the main living space, it wasn't especially burdensome. The bulk of the work was installing the behemoth of a hot water tank!
I'm currently investigating options for kitchen sinks and such. It feels quite silly to have a long length of pipe leading from a central source for a small amount of warm water to wash my hands.
There's a limit: you can fill a medium saucepan with boiling water, but large/industrial-kitchen pans will exhaust the boiling water and you'll need to wait for the next batch.
It's fine for general household use.
Daikin (and presumably others, but they're the ones we went with) do have integrated tanks/heatpump internal units. It might be worth having a think about your actual needs and it may be that there is a solution.
My experience with electric hot water taps is that they've been universally awful and only a last resort, but equally the state of the art may have moved on since I last looked!
This is only the beginning. Soon people will realize that a mini-split install isn't that much more expensive than a portable AC, but is a lot more convenient.
The UK typically doesn't need air conditioning, so why would people spend money on it? Yes, I know this recent summer was exceptionally hot but people don't react that quickly to changes.
> decarbonizing heating
What does this mean? More renewables? If efficiency reduces energy demands then it directly results in less carbon.
> electric vehicles
Aren't people already adopting electric vehicles? Do you think that the government should introduce a scheme to persuade people to buy electric vehicles? Does the availability of charging for electric vehicles need improving?
> Efficiency is good after you have high living standards but the UK should probably focus on growth first
Efficiency means saving money. In what circumstance could efficiency be bad? The grid responds to demand, unused electricity means higher prices for consumers. One of biggest issues right now in the UK is cost of living crisis, so raising electricity prices would be universally hated. How does making the grid less efficient increase growth?
I believe this refers to switching to high-efficiency electric heaters like reverse-cycle AC units (also known as "heat pumps"), rather than oil heaters or ducted gas heating.
Decarbonisation usually means replacing that boiler with a heat pump which uses electricity to heat water.
I don't know where you live but UK summers were unbearable even when I was a kid. Buildings are engineered to trap heat, so the heat doesn't dissipate at night and every day the indoor temperature rises, and rises...
At least they removed the need for planning permission recently. The problem is that the places that need AC the most (flats) will probably not be able to get it until the leasehold system has been abolished.
> > decarbonizing heating
> What does this mean?
Presumably it means heating using electric heat pumps rather than gas boilers. This also solves the AC problem. I don't think this is viable for most people. Heating was never the problem anyway, at least in the south winters are mild.
well, i live in lincolnshire and used to live in london. i usually have a fan on for a few weeks over summer, but that's it. where in the UK did you live that the summers were so unbearable?
Not to be that guy, in the last 20 years, 27 was considered a heatwave.
> Buildings are engineered to trap heat,
I mean Victorian buildings were engineered to let in light, and have good ventilation. Hence why each room has a huge sash window, an airbrick and a fireplace.
This makes insulation sound like a bad thing. The more insulation you have the less the indoor temperature is affected by the outside temperature.
Insulation isn't magic, over many days of hot weather eventually the building will reach equilibrium with the average outside temperature. This means it will be cooler indoors than outdoors during the day, and hotter indoors than outdoors at night.
However, the nights are specifically when you want a residential building to be cooler, assuming the inhabitants are not at home during the day. So the insulation actually makes the building hotter from the perspective of the inhabitants.
Nobody "needs" air conditioning, but even a modest window unit provides a huge improvement in quality of life whenever it's 80+ outside.
It can be considered a medical necessity for people with certain conditions like anhidrosis, asthma, COPD, kidneys disease, or cardiovascular issues. It's also a huge medical benefit for people with terrible allergies who wouldn't be able to open a window even when that'd normally help cool the house.
We are? It’s becoming more common and we had a few bad summers and earlier this year too. The heat wave a few years back killed my dad.
Given there’s a push to swap heating systems for more efficient ones, air con units are being looked at a lot more.
We had 6 heat waves this summer. Parents were booking hotels just to keep their kids cool
We also had heatwaves in 2022, 2021, 2019, 2018. 2024 wasn't bad but was still the 4th hottest year on record.
You can absolutely bet the better-off middle classes are installing aircon. I know many. If more people could afford it they would get it
It's the humidity too not just the heat. And how after 3 or 4 days of high temps, our houses just do not cool down at night because they act like radiators. Humid 25c+ nights suck for us
The UK is definitely doing all three of these things. Though arguably not fast enough, for some of them.
* https://rac.co.uk/drive/news/electric-vehicles-news/1-in-3-n...
EVs are almost at the supply issues point. I've had one on order since June, which I suppose is my fault for choosing Stellantis.
BEV is 28% of new car sales HEV is 13%
I’m thinking about it, but there’s a lot of other things I could spend the capital on.