2020-03-02

_posts/2020-03-01-ac-climate-change.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: AC Use Due To Climate Change
+date: 2020-03-01 16:28:05.000000000 +01:00
+type: post
+published: true
+status: publish
+categories: [General]
+image:
+image2:
+author: Valentino Urbano
+---
+
+In these last few years summer in Italy (and most of southern Europe) has become too hot for people to live comfortably without air conditioning. We have seen peaks of more than 40 degrees with a really high humidity and as far as sources show it looks likely to keep rising.
+
+Italian people are used to the hot climate, so much so that they keep refusing to install AC units despite temperatures being dangerously high in the summer months (especially so for old people and people with existing conditions). But finally something is starting to change...
+
+I went back on the topic recently and almost everyone in the family is now adamant that they're going to need it "in the next few years", with few already having plans to install it before the summer. I expect this to be a sentiment shared among most southern European residents. Heck probably even in Central Europe soon.
+
+This brings us to the real problem that no one is discussing. Demand for electricity will surely increase as most people will soon start turning on their AC during the summer months as it is the norm in the US. There is no alternative, this is going to happen. It is simply too dangerous to live without, especially for old people. As they say habits diie hard, but I'm confident that despite the slowness to change it will.
+
+This will require even more work from the various governments to migrate to sustainable ways of generating electricity to be able to both sustain the increased demand during peak hours and to cope with the increased overall energy footprint.[^1]
+
+## Energy Generation
+
+The solution is to increase the domestic production of energy (preferrably of clean energy - aka not more coal mines).
+
+The problem with traditionally defined clearn energy (solar/wind) is that using solar is not a viable strategy on its own. Solar energy generation peaks at a time when most people do not need it (midday) and stops when people need it the most (evening). It needs a way to store the generated energy.
+
+Tesla (for example) has solved it using batteries which are already in use in Australia. We don't rally have that much open space in Italy though, so I think that what they are doing in the UK fits the Italian geography the most: they use cheap energy during off peak hours to pump back uphill water to be later used (during peak hours) through hydroelectric to generate more electricity to keep up with the demand.
+
+Nuclear is also a great form of clean energy to use, but after Chernobyl and Fukushima most EU countries have migrated off it exacerbating the problem. Hopefully the fusion breakthrough revitalizes the sector and we have some more investment in it.
+
+More importantly we need to take the energy security of our countries seriously and stop relying on other countries to provide it to us. We have a lot of space to harness offshore wind, but we don't do it because the local residents don't want it because and I quote "it looks ugly from the beach and scares the tourists away". What a shame.
+
+[^1]: Not to talk about all the new electric vehicles coming online more and more and you have the recipe for an energy disaster if governments don't act.