The AC Paradox: Air Conditioning Could Add 8.5 Billion Tonnes of CO₂ by 2050
Here’s a climate feedback loop that doesn’t get enough attention: the hotter it gets, the more we cool ourselves, and the more we cool ourselves, the hotter it gets. A new study in Nature Communications by Hongzhi Zhang, Yuli Shan (University of Birmingham), and colleagues has quantified this problem with uncomfortable precision. The Numbers Under a mid-range emissions scenario (SSP2-4.5), cumulative AC-related emissions from 2010 to 2050 could reach 113.3 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalents. In the worst case, annual emissions from air conditioning alone could hit 8.5 billion tonnes by 2050 — significantly more than the current total US emissions of 5.9 Gt/year. ...