Ah, air conditioning. I love it just as much as the next person. But it has downsides especially as the planet gets hotter. In Washington state, air conditioning used to be unusual in homes.

There are houses on our street without A/C and our upper level had no A/C until two years ago. The heat dome event in June 2021 convinced us we needed to do something after my office reached a very toasty 95 degrees. We added a mini-split heat pump for cooling and heating. As of 2023, the estimated A/C adoption in Washington State was 85% while the national average was 94% In 2000, the adoption rate in Washington was about 44%.

A recent post from Jay Inslee, Washington’s governor, shared three key stats related to energy consumption. Compared to about 1970 data:

• Washington is warming with heat waves lasting 2.1 days longer
• Washington is growing: the population is 171% larger
• A/C use is increasing: demand is 152% higher

Heat events are getting bigger and more extreme. And there’s also evidence that humans can’t handle as much heat as previously believed (sciencenews.org). More hotter days and longer heat events result in an uptick in A/C usage creating an enormous impact on the energy grid.

So what should we do? 

In the most recent heat event, we decided to try an experiment: no A/C. It was a fairly low-risk experiment because the lows were low enough to cool the house overnight and into the morning hours. We waited for the temperature outside to go below the indoor temp and then opened the windows and deployed fans. In the morning, we wait for the outside temps to approach the inside temps and close everything up.

It was a small thing to go without A/C for a few days, but small individual changes add up when reducing the load on the energy grid.

Some caveats. We have the following things in place:

• Our many windows have some type of window covering; some have more than one (e.g., wood blinds plus insulated curtains).
• Three of the four skylights in the house have retractable shades.
• Many fans, including three that fit in the windows.
• Multiple temperature gauges that make it easy to see the inside vs. outside temp
• Property with a lot of huge shade trees.
• Heat pumps which are more energy efficient (energy.gov).

Adjusting our internal thermostat? If you have ever been a transplant to Arizona, you know that it’s possible to tolerate what seem like impossible temperatures. And there’s some science behind that. This process of acclimatization has been used by athletes and in the military. Check out this article, How Our Bodies Can Adapt to Heat – The New York Times by Katharine Gammon.

Photo by Nicolas Houdayer on Unsplash