Urban cooling demand
node · earth · Global
The fastest-growing large use of electricity in the world, and the one most tightly bound to urban form. IEA analysis puts global electricity use for space cooling — air conditioners, fans and district cooling — at more than 2,900 terawatt-hours in 2025, up roughly 50 per cent over the preceding decade, more than the electricity consumption of the European Union, with the residential air-conditioner stock having tripled since 2000 to well over a billion units and the great majority of future growth expected in emerging and developing economies. The urban dimension is that cities are hotter than their surroundings by construction — dark impervious surface, waste heat, reduced evapotranspiration — so the same climate produces more cooling demand inside a city than outside it, and each additional unit of cooling rejects its heat into the street. It is the clearest case in the built environment of a device that solves the problem for the individual and adds to it for everyone, and it lands on the same grid that is being asked to decarbonise.
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Connections · 2
- Ahmedabadaffects
- Twenty-first-century urbanisationaffects
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 23 blocks · 1 evidence · 17 related
- Story
- The fastest-growing large use of electricity in the world, and the one most tightly bound to urban form. IEA analysis puts global electricity use for space cooling — air conditioners, fans and district cooling — at more than 2,900 terawatt-hours in 2025, up roughly 50 per cent over the preceding decade, more than the electricity consumption of the European Union, with the residential air-conditioner stock having tripled since 2000 to well over a billion units and the great majority of future growth expected in emerging and developing economies. The urban dimension is that cities are hotter than their surroundings by construction — dark impervious surface, waste heat, reduced evapotranspiration — so the same climate produces more cooling demand inside a city than outside it, and each additional unit of cooling rejects its heat into the street. It is the clearest case in the built environment of a device that solves the problem for the individual and adds to it for everyone, and it lands on the same grid that is being asked to decarbonise.
- Knowledge
- Twenty-first-century urbanisation
- Urban cooling demand
- Ahmedabad
- Connections
- Ahmedabad
- Twenty-first-century urbanisation
- Urban cooling demand
- Heat action plan
- Ahmedabad adopts South Asia's first heat action plan
- Degree of Urbanisation
- Sub-Saharan African urban growth
- Agglomeration
- Urban cooling demand
- The world is reported to become majority urban
- Nigeria's census is postponed again
- The JMP reports flat urban water coverage
- World Urbanization Prospects 2025 changes the measurement
- Where the next billion city dwellers are projected to be
- Evidence
- Supports the statement that global electricity demand for space cooling exceeded 2,900 TWh in 2025, having risen roughly 50 per cent over the preceding decade, that it exceeds the electricity consumption of the European Union, and that the residential air-conditioner stock has tripled since 2000. V55 verification basis: retrieved from IEA analysis pages and news summaries; no IEA report was opened, and the appliance-stock figure carries a different base year from the electricity figure.
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/atlas?object=PHENOMENON_SPACE_COOLING_DEMAND&experience=PHENOMENON_SPACE_COOLING_DEMAND