Exposure to health risks due to extreme temperatures have been growing worldwide and a significant number of heat related deaths are reported annually during the summer months in both the northern and southern hemispheres, particularly among the elderly, the poor, and in densely populated cities.
Exposure to health risks due to extreme temperatures have been growing worldwide and a significant number of heat related deaths are reported annually during the summer months in both the northern and southern hemispheres, particularly among the elderly, the poor, and in densely populated cities. Due to its high cost, air conditioning is considered a luxury, and only 8% of the 2.8 billion people living in the world’s hottest regions possess an air conditioning unit. In addition, more than one billion people lack access to electricity and at least one billion live in slum conditions, both of which make access to space cooling challenging. The lack of access to essential indoor cooling is a major equity issue and is increasingly seen as a dimension of energy poverty and wellbeing that demands attention from policymakers.
While a number of previous studies have looked at increases in energy demand due to the increased use of air conditioning, there is a dearth of research around where the combination of adverse climate conditions and poverty coincide. In this study, IIASA researchers for the first time estimated spatially explicit residential cooling needs in the Global South in combination with access to space cooling technologies to highlight the location of populations potentially exposed to heat stress. The results revealed large gaps in access to essential space cooling, especially in India, South-East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa and provide a first estimation of the energy required to fill this gap.
Read more at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Image via Pixabay
