With our planet gradually warming up to record temperatures, the demand for air conditioning is booming all over the world.

Even countries such as Germany, which traditionally regarded air conditioning as something unnecessary, wasteful and bad for the environment have been forced to reconsider their need for cooling after last year's heatwave.

Cooling is something our society can't live without. We use cooling for comfort in our homes, offices and shopping centers to escape the summer heat, we use it for preserving our food and our medicines and we use it for cooling down our data centers.

In the case of a further increase of the global temperature, cooling will be key to offer relief from heatwaves, support reduction of food loss and guarantee the supply of heat-sensitive medicines.

At a global level, the situation is even more challenging than in the EU. The need for cooling is crucially increasing in developing countries with hot climates, where urbanization, a growing population and rising incomes are driving an increasing demand for air conditioning.

While today Europe's use of air conditioning is still significantly below that of China, the US, Japan and South Korea, the European Commission's Heating and Cooling Strategy estimates the number of air conditioners and refrigerators in European homes will more than double by 2030.

Climate warming could force Europe to put aside its reluctance to use air conditioning and seriously challenge the EU's target to cut carbon emissions entirely by 2050.

How does cooling contribute to global warming?

The main issue with cooling is its energy demand. Air conditioners and similar devices are already responsible for 10 percent of global electricity consumption today.

A growth in the use of cooling will require more power stations and more electricity transmission infrastructure to be built, which would have a significant impact on the environment.

According to 2018 figures from Eurostat, 75 percent of heating and cooling in the EU is generated from fossil fuels, while only 19 percent comes from renewable energy.

"If the energy consumption increases and if we continue to rely on fossil fuels, which in Europe still represents some 78 percent of the energy mix, then this will also have an impact on the emissions," said Andrea Voigt, director general of the European Partnership for Energy and the Environment (EPEE).

"Therefore it's really important not to continue business as usual, but really to act and to deploy sustainable cooling solutions. The beauty is that these solutions are already available, what we really need now is to make sure that they are really deployed in the market and used in the market," she added.

Luckily, European air conditioners are already among the most energy-efficient in the world. But should the EU fail to commit to sustainable cooling solutions, the burden will be felt in the energy sector, and ultimately in our homes.

"If we don't deploy the solutions available, if this were not the case, we would run into problems, particularly with peak demands for electricity with which we will not be able to cope and we will have breakdown and failures and, of course, an increase of emissions if energy consumption doesn't go down," said Voigt.

What are the solutions available?

"There are a lot of solutions already available, and many of them are absolutely cost-effective, meaning that they save money," said Mark Radka, head of UN Environment's Energy and Climate Branch.

He added: "There's a bias in many instances for buying a cheap product, but that uses a lot of energy and over its lifetime that means a lot more money spent by a family or the owner of the air conditioner.

"If we can get people motivated to buy more efficient equipment that might be higher in cost initially but it saves money over the long run, that means a win for the environment and savings for the individual as well."

In Voigt's opinion, "each region in the world needs to find its own solutions." But the global trends ask for more energy efficiency in cooling devices, better services, monitoring and maintenance.

The need for cooling has to be optimized, something that could be achieved simply by improving the design of our buildings and our cities.

"There's much that can be done in terms of urban design that decreases the demand for mechanical cooling and that extends as well to building design," said Voigt. "Simple things like having white roofs on buildings, or even better a green roof, have multiple benefits – environmental as well as on the quality of life of urban residents."    

While certain decisions are up to customers' education and saving choices, there is the need for financial institutions to drive a structural change.

The key action point for the EU, though, will be to switch to renewable energy.

"All of you really have to become ambassadors of the idea that sustainable cooling really matters," said Radka, addressing the audience of experts and media gathered for COP25 in Madrid.