The cultural war on aircon beautifully illustrates modern stupidity and ignorance:
- climate change deniers and far right grifters don't want heat pumps for the winter but want aircon
- the econazis and far left grifters who think that suffering in the heat is virtuous want heatpumps in the winter but not aircon
However, both camps are too stupid, ignorant and dogmatic to understand that... aircons ARE heat pumps FFS!
Aircons are reversible air to air heat pumps, which is a kind of air source heat pump. Reversible means they can heat in the winter and cool in the summer.
If we use them to heat in the winter, we pollute much less than with gas boilers. The cost is about the same: they are about 4x more efficient than gas boilers, but electricity costs about 3.5x more, so it's a slight saving (look up their COP, coefficient of performance).
We are already expanding our grid capacity to cope with more heat pumps in the winter.
In the summer, the need for aircon will be directly linked to solar.
The only legitimate concern is that aircon may make the urban heat island effect worse. But it increases it by 0.5 to 2C, whereas things like more shading, more trees, reflective paints etc reduce it by much less.
Regardless, the environmental impact is not a valid reason not to heat our homes, so why should it be a valid reason not to cool them? The Econazis cannot explain this.
Imagine it the other way round: imagine forcing people to live in houses which remain freezing cold, and preventing them from installing any form of heating, because it would pollute, because it's not permitted development, because the council says no, etc. We would never accept this nonsense with heating, so why do we accept it when it comes to cooling???
None of this means that passive cooling and shading are not important. They are. Very much so. But, like the UK Climate Change Committee concluded, passive cooling alone is not always sufficient, and active cooling will become increasingly necessary.
PS For clarity, aircon became permitted development in May 2025. BUT it remains subject to very stringent noise limits (look up the MCS noise calculations) which are too strict and impossible to meet for many small terraced houses. For flats, only 1 external unit per block is allowed under permitted development but, regardless, freeholders almost never consent.