Is Europe Totally Changing The Way We Make Air Conditioners?

Summers in Europe on an ever-warming planet are no joke. In the U.S., we've grown accustomed to greetings of chilled air when we enter nearly any building on any day over 75 degrees. Air conditioning isn't common in Europe, but with deadly heat waves hitting the continent regularly and only projected to worsen over the rest of the century, cooling off is becoming, literally, a life-and-death issue.  According to EuroMOMO, a European mortality monitoring agency, the estimated tallies for heat-related deaths in Europe this year are well over 9,000 in June alone, but it seems this isn't incentive enough for the region to rapidly turn to air conditioning. 

Instead of settling for conventional air conditioning technology, European researchers are experimenting with cooling methods that don't rely on environmentally damaging refrigerants. Although most of these developments have barely moved out of the lab and into trial mode, they show real promise in delivering cool air without producing as many greenhouse gases or consuming as much energy as the current technology does.

As they stand, even the most cost-effective ways to run air conditioners aren't tempting enough to drive widespread adoption. In general, the eco-minded Europeans' reluctance to use A/C is deeply rooted in concern about climate change.  Still, with such increases in heat-related deaths, the onus is on Europe to find a way to save lives and the planet at the same time. In response, they are delving into cooling innovations that are much lighter on the earth than the ones we take for granted in other parts of the world.

So, what does refrigerant-free cooling look like? There's a growing field in the cooling industry that takes advantage of "solid state" technology; these methods eliminate refrigerants from the equation in favor of semiconductors that depend on materials that cool when they're subjected to outside forces.

In 2024, the European Union voted to phase out the use of refrigerants. This, along with the grim reality of deadly heat, is likely pushing European industry to develop products that address both issues. Scientists around the world — including the United States — are developing air conditioners that cool with a phenomenon called elastocalorics; certain metal alloys like nickel titanium experience temperature changes when they're stretched and released. This technology has the potential to keep people healthy and cool without doing the opposite to the planet. Fortunately, there are a good number of viable options besides elastocalorics that can only increase the likelihood of refrigerant-free air conditioning becoming a reality. 

Solid state air conditioning isn't yet ready to become an eco-friendly home trend, but European companies are hard at work to bring this to consumers as soon as possible. The Irish company Exergyn is tweaking a heat pump with cooling capabilities that they're hoping to release within a few years. The European Innovation Council is backing a project called SMAcool that relies on elastocalorics; German company Magnotherm is working on magnetic field-based cooling, and British engineers at Barocal are compressing plastic crystals that release heat through this process. With so many promising ideas brewing, Europe is set to bring eco-friendly air conditioning to the world in the near future.