On this weeks business trips to Friedrichshafen, Zürich and Paris I was just surprised that still so many people leave their aircondition on in September.
None of the places had more than 15 degrees Celsius, but
- two out of four taxis had their aircon on
- in my hotel room in Paris, it was hard to switch the aircon off, in fact, I could hardly sleep because of the noise
- in my meeting room in the Regus office in Paris, I nearly got a cold because I could not switch off the air condition
I sort of do understand if people need airconditioning in the summer, if things go above 30 degrees, for example in Italy, but my current impression is that people often just do not know that air condition is one of the least efficient uses of energy in general. It is worse than heating, but seldom talked about.
Tags: green
I’m not sure if people don’t know about this. I guess they just don’t care.
During my recent visit to Israel in late June, it reached 40+ degrees. My folks had the air conditioning off, and I asked them why – apparently the national electric company could not handle the load, and was issuing a request to citizens to shut down their a/c, one day a week according to metropolitan area (ie; Jerusalam on Sunday, Tel Aviv on Monday, Haifa on Tuesday and so forth).
I find that Israelis in general have a certain amount of awareness to how much energy they are consuming, many contracters build apartment buildings in which a cross-breeze through the apartment would be possible.
When I was on holiday in Italy two months ago during the hottest days of the year, they were fearing outages as well due to the electricity consumptions of a/c as well.
It seems like drastical communication helps best like the one in Israel.