Heat Pumps Are Good Politics

There’s a famous saying in management circles: Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

In a warming world marked by populist politics, the climate equivalent might be: Culture eats climate policy for breakfast.

As air conditioning becomes the latest front in the culture wars, climate hawks would be wise to avoid the culture war trap being set. Instead we should meet the world where it is with a simple, culturally relevant, and popular approach that keeps people cool on a warming planet — a heat pump populism for the masses.

A hot new world

As the climate warms, increasing numbers of cities, regions, and countries are being faced with an uncomfortable new reality — their built environments weren’t built for this environment. Heat waves like the “once in a millennium” Pacific Northwest heat dome of 2021 or this year’s “warmest summer on record” for the UK — which has kept track of such things since 1884 — are driving the need for air conditioning in places it hasn’t historically been required.

The new air conditioning units installed in response to these heat waves drive up already significant electricity consumption — and greenhouse gas emissions in the process. Air conditioning emissions alone account for 3% of global emissions, and are projected to grow significantly as AC unit sales triple by 2050. In China, which also saw heat records fall this summer, air conditioner sales doubled from June to July.

The climate community has responded with concern about the climate doom loop this represents. The impacts of climate change — most pertinently in this case, increased temperatures — unleash more air conditioning usage, which only exacerbates the underlying problem of climate change, itself.

The climate politics doom loop

But there’s another, far more sinister doom loop climate hawks should fear — a doom loop that undermines the political resilience necessary to respond to climate change at all.

This doom loop begins with climate impacts that directly harm average people, generating resentment towards existing institutions — notably the ruling government — that anti-climate populist politicians seize on to aid their rise to power. That in turn leads to anticlimate policymaking that exacerbates the underlying problem, climate change, unleashing yet more impacts. And on and on the cycle goes.

Take for example what happened following the historic flooding in Spain’s Valencia region last fall. Rather than looking to address the underlying causes of the catastrophe, including climate change, populist anti-climate parties seized on the perceived inability of mainstream politics to deal with the situation. They instead sought to sow distrust and climate denial by painting the government as inept and incapable of helping people in their time of need, thereby bolstering their case to overthrow the powers that be.

That appears to be a page from the same playbook populists all over Europe are now using after heat waves gripped a region where air conditioning use is projected to grow by 40% by 2050, compared to the historical average from the last decade. From France to the UK, anti-climate populists are seeking to paint the political left — particularly climate-minded parties — as out of touch radicals bent on denying the sweaty masses their relief. As Nicolas Bouzou, the French liberal economist and essayist, put it recently: “The left is against air conditioners, and the right is in favor.”

In other words, the anti-climate right is actively laying a climate doom loop trap — and it appears that at least some members of the climate community are walking right into it. In the UK, 58% of Green Party voters support discouraging AC installation to cope with heat waves. Meanwhile, in France, the head of the French Green party reportedly “scoffed” at Marine Le Pen’s proposal to deploy air conditioners as part of her policy platform, instead, he offered more energy-efficient buildings as a solution. France’s left-wing daily Liberation called AC “an environmental aberration that must be overcome.”

But what if climate hawks attempted some political jiu jitsu instead? What if we decided to make some lemonade out of these lemons? What if, and hear me out, we decided to scold a little less and push abundance a little more? What if, in a hotter world, we stood for something cool?

Heat pump populism for the new political reality

May I present: the humble heat pump, otherwise known as a two-way AC, i.e. just the opportunity climate advocates should be looking for. The heat pump is essentially an AC unit that can heat as well as cool. Most AC companies don’t unlock the heating capability because it adds to their manufacturing costs — generally $200 to $500 — to do so. If that modest cost were not an issue, AC manufacturers could not only help deploy desperately needed relief from extreme temperatures and rising costs, they could also deploy cheaper, clean and fossil fuel-free heating at the same time.

That’s the argument Nate Adams and the team at the Collaborative Labeling and Appliance Standards Program — otherwise known as Clasp, a nonprofit organization focused on improving the efficiency of everyday appliances and equipment — made when they called for a supply-side intervention to make heat pumps affordable and universally available. Rather than subsidizing heat pump purchases and hoping homeowners take advantage, we should incentivize AC manufacturers and distributors to exclusively sell two-way air conditioners moving forward — no more one-way AC.

Under such a policy, participating manufacturers or distributors would receive a few-hundred-dollar incentive for every two-way AC (i.e. heat pump) sold. That subsidy would decline over time as manufacturers convert production lines and costs come down. Crucially, any participating company would have to commit to stop producing one-way ACs. In addition, governments and participating manufacturers would be wise to invest in training and education programs for HVAC contractors to speed deployment and support consumer education.

The Clasp team calculates that a program like this would cost somewhere between $3 billion to $12 billion in the United States and result in 45 million new two-way ACs deployed, which would save citizens $27 billion in direct energy costs and $80 billion in indirect societal benefits — such as, yes, mitigating climate change.

As I’ve argued previously alongside Nate, the shift in policy focus from consumers to manufacturers and suppliers is really, really important. Most AC replacement purchases are driven by existing equipment breaking down — and now by historic heat waves setting in — which causes panic-buying. That almost always leads people to buy the first replacement they can find, and that’s almost never a heat pump.

If we instead incentivize manufacturers to ensure that heat pumps and only heat pumps are on hardware and home goods store shelves and make it easy for average people to buy and install them by educating HVAC installers around their benefits then we solve this problem. Heat pumps become the default.

Now map that policy onto the political landscape. Imagine that instead of climate-oriented politicians being perceived as out of touch radicals who want to ban air conditioning, we have political leaders using the next inevitable heat wave to announce a new policy of abundant air conditioning for all. That alone won’t win the culture war — it will still require savvy salesmanship to make the pitch land with voters, not to mention digital acumen of a sort the left seems woefully behind in developing. But the ingredients are there, if only our leaders are willing and able to seize on them.

Ironically, as wildfires now ravage Spain, the country’s center-left prime minister is now calling for a national climate pact. His call is a beacon of hope that the climate doom loop can indeed be broken by forward-looking politicians who realize that we must address the underlying cause of these impacts before it’s too late.

It’s time others follow his lead and use these moments of visceral climate impact to drive climate policy forward with an unabashedly populist policy agenda. That’s how we take the bite out of the air conditioning culture war before it even begins. And maybe, just maybe, it’s how we begin to reclaim our politics.