Air conditioning push favoured over emissions cuts in five European nations, survey finds

Given the choice, more people across five major European nations including the UK favour encouraging the adoption of air conditioning over keeping carbon emissions down, a survey has found.

After four extreme heatwaves that have caused thousands of excess deaths across the continent, the survey showed between 30% and 52% of people in six countries had feared for their household’s health in temperatures close to or above 40C (104F).

Large numbers of people, ranging from 27% in Spain to 41% in France and 53% in Germany, said they felt they could not keep their homes cool enough, and many wanted governments to explore a variety of ways to help make them more comfortable.

The YouGov polling, carried out in mid-July in France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain and in early August in the UK, found that between 61% and 73% of respondents favoured air conditioning being installed as standard in all new homes.

A further 65% to 75% backed making it easier for people to install air conditioning without needing permission from local councils or landlords, and between 52% and 66% said they would support government subsidies for homeowners to have it installed.

In every country except Italy, significantly more people – between 41% and 48% – said allowing and encouraging more air conditioning to reduce harms from heatwaves should be prioritised over lowering CO2 emissions, with 20% to 33% believing the reverse.

In all countries, more people thought more air conditioning would have a very or fairly large impact on reducing harms from heatwaves (29% to 61%) than that it would have a very or fairly large impact on their country’s climate figures (19% to 40%).

Air conditioning is much less common in Europe than in the US, where 93% of people have a central or portable system. The poll put take-up at 63% in Italy and 58% in Spain, but only 30% in France, 23% in Poland, 16% in Germany and 11% in the UK.

Those figures do not reflect broad opposition to air conditioning, however, with attitudes mainly positive (46% to 60%) or neutral (31% to 39%). France was an outlier, with 20% hostile, and left-leaning voters notably more negative than elsewhere.

Air conditioning has become a new front in Europe’s culture wars, with mainstream parties accused of blocking its large-scale use on “ideological” green grounds, and far-right parties, which are broadly opposed to combating the climate crisis, pushing it as vital.

Rightwing US commentators say low take-up shows Europe is badly governed and overregulated. European experts back air conditioning for people at risk, but many favour longer-term solutions – such as more shade, better insulation – over mechanical cooling.

Scientists have long said human-made global heating is making extreme weather events more frequent and more intense, turbocharging severe heatwaves, prolonged droughts and violent storms, which are breaking more and more records.

Few Europeans – between 12% and 24% – thought more air conditioning would make people less dedicated to combating the climate crisis, and those with air conditioning were generally no less likely to be concerned about the climate than those without.

Asked why they did not have air conditioning, 51% to 75% of people in each country said cost was the main obstacle. Climate impact was notably less important, at between 6% and 17%, except in France (27%).

Engineers installing an air conditioning unit at a home in Croydon, south London. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

But while most people would support making it easier to get air conditioning, between 35% and 46% in each country thought most problems associated with people being unable to keep cool during heatwaves could also be solved without it.

Asked what their government’s priority should be, more people (27% to 42%) said other methods of keeping homes cool – including external shutters, insulation and reflective roofs – should be prioritised over air conditioning (12% to 20%).

The survey showed that for people who had air conditioning, the impact was clear: 79% to 85% of those with it said they were able to keep internal temperatures comfortable during the recent heatwaves, compared with only 35% to 47% among those without it.

It found that 14% to 17% of air conditioning owners in Italy, France and Spain had felt unable to use it as much as they needed because of the cost, while 28% to 38% said they had used it often but as a result would need to cut spending elsewhere.