French aversion to air conditioning melts as homes sizzle

PARIS: As Europe’s heatwave leaves millions sweltering in poorly insulated apartments, schools and retirement homes, more French people are breaking with tradition to turn to air conditioning.

Many in France believe cooling systems are bad for the environment.

But with scientists saying climate change is fuelling increasingly frequent hot spells in France, cooling units are starting to fly off shelves and have even become a hot topic in the runup to next year’s presidential election.

Matthieu Ruquet, 35, says he was against AC, but his American wife convinced him to buy a portable unit to keep their two-year-old daughter and dog cool after their flat in the Paris suburbs reached 36C indoors.

When his partner went to the store, there were none left.

“I didn’t grow up with AC,” said the Frenchman from the Mediterranean city of Nice, who said his family coped using fans.

But his mother had in recent years bought a unit, and now so was he.

“I think it’s changing,” he said. But “the main problem for me is that buying AC is going to make the planet hotter.”

France on Wednesday experienced its hottest day since measurements began in 1947, the national weather service said.

‘Isn’t a problem’

Eight in 10 people in France view air-conditioning as environmentally unfriendly, according to a survey of more than 1,000 published earlier this month.

Detractors argue cooling a room or building is high in energy consumption.

But experts say the impact on the environment depends on the source of the energy consumed to operate it.

“Air conditioning isn’t a problem for the environment today in France,” Francois Gemenne, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expert, told French television this month, as France did not rely that much on fossil fuels for its power.

Nuclear power stations produced almost 70% of France’s electricity last year.

Urban planner Clement Gaillard said AC was not problematic as long as it was not used as the only solution.

The real problem was more that building designs were not taking climate change into account.

These included modern buildings with large glass windows, or relatively new homes with insulation that worked in winter but not in summer, he said.

The air conditioning units do have some downsides. They use potentially polluting cooling fluid and reject hot air outside.

This warm air does not heat up the atmosphere on a global scale, but it can locally worsen heat by a few degree decimals to several degrees in densely built, poorly ventilated urban areas, said Vincent Viguie of the International Centre for Research on Environment and Development (CIRED).

A 2025 simulation of a densely populated neighbourhood in the French city of Lyon showed that air conditioners installed on building facades could locally raise the air temperature by 1.75C.

‘Illusion of adapting’

But scientists agree that other solutions to stave off the heat are reaching their limits.

The CIRED institute recently simulated an extreme heatwave in the Paris region in the years 2070 to 2100.

It found that replacing all air conditioning with other measures such as green spaces and renovating buildings would leave residents exposed for six hours a day to perceived temperatures above 32C.

Experts have suggested using low-tech solutions such as blinds or ceiling fans not to avoid using air conditioning, but use it less.

Ahead of elections next year to replace President Emmanuel Macron, candidates have seized on the issue.

Leading far-right figure Marine Le Pen wants air conditioning for all.

“The kind of extreme heat we’re experiencing, it kills people,” she said.

Her hard-left rival Jean-Luc Melenchon disagreed.

“We can’t install air conditioning everywhere. It’s a false solution that makes the problem worse,” he retorted, calling for better insulation of buildings.

Climatologist Christophe Cassou said he feared the debate on the climate in the run-up to the election would be reduced to a basic “For or against air conditioning?”

“But we won’t have discussed anything,” he said, urging serious discussions on making cities more resilient, but also other key topics including agriculture and power production.

Without these, politicians would merely be creating the “illusion of adapting” to climate change.