Title: Air-Conditioning Is an Environmental Quandary - The New York Times
Headings: The Cost of Cool
The Cost of Cool
Content: The comfortable temperature for sleeping (naked) is around 84, Mr. Tanabe says, if a fan is on. Those suggestions are a good deal warmer than the norms in the United States, which underlines a cultural differences in cooling preferences. “The temperature many Americans find most comfortable indoors in summer — 70 degrees — feels uncomfortable to most Europeans, who find it too cold,” said Mr. Sivak, who suggested that Europe’s greater environmental awareness might make people more inclined to put on an extra sweater in winter or tolerate a bit more heat in summer. Unfortunately many tropical places — including Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong — seem to have followed the United States’ lead in cooling preferences, Mr. Tanabe said, holding cooler to be better. But certainly if I deserve to have an air-conditioner here in New York, my counterpart in Mumbai deserves to have one, too. So individuals need to be coaxed to make new choices. “We need to educate people there are other ways to be comfortable than just turning up the A.C., you have to use it wisely,” said Mr. Wargocki, speaking from his condo in Singapore with the windows open late one evening to create natural drafts for cooling. He began telling me about how the European Union was effectively forcing companies to use less cooling, by mandating that new buildings meet stricter energy-use standards. Since air-conditioning gobbles up far more electricity than heating in many office buildings, one way for architects to achieve compliance is to avoid an over-reliance on air-conditioning — for example, building with materials that do not absorb heat or pumping in cool air from deep underground. I was listening from my living room in New York on a steamy Sunday morning.