Britain needs AC.

Here's a three point plan to get it.

Britain is getting hotter. Temperature records are being broken left, right, and centre.

Yet, just 5% of British households have air con. That’s one of the lowest rates in Europe. Even three times as many Swedish homes have air con as us.

When it gets too hot indoors it is not just uncomfortable, it can be dangerous. Heat kills over 2,000 people each year in Britain.

London and Portland (OR) have roughly the same number of hot summer days each year, but four-fifths of Portland households have AC. So when temperatures hit 30 degrees or higher, death rates in our nation’s capital almost double, but barely move in Portland.

So why don’t more Brits have AC?

Don’t blame the British weather. The reason British households do not have AC is because our government makes it much harder to get than it needs to be.

Rules created when our grid was mostly powered by fossil fuels are blocking Brits from installing air con today.

Take ‘Part O’ Building Regulations. They’re meant to stop us from overheating in well-insulated new builds, but they rule out the one technology that can cool us down when it gets as hot as today.

They tell developers to limit ‘solar gain’ or, as you might call it, ‘‘sunlight’, by having fewer windows. If they want bigger windows, they must carry out expensive modelling. Air con is only allowed ‘as a last resort’ when all other options have failed.

In London, the rules are even stricter. The expensive modelling is mandatory and new builds must maximise dual-aspect – that is, having windows on two separate external walls for a nice through breeze.

Not only are these measures ineffective, they make housing less affordable. To meet the requirement while complying with new fire safety rules, developers end up building flats in a notch pattern cutting into floorspace

The result is new homes in London are smaller and can cost up to 40% more to build.

Why the opposition to air con?

Some think it’s bad for the climate.

That’s no longer true. Put simply, the green case against the air con is just hot air.

First, Britain is producing record levels of solar. On sunny days like last Friday, more of our power comes from the sun than any other source. In fact, we are producing so much that in some cases we are literally paying solar farms to switch off. Expect these payments to grow in the coming years as we install more and more solar.

Second, air-to-air heat pumps are reversible. Not only do they allow us to warm our homes by pumping in heat from outside in the Winter, they can cool down our homes in the summer. Britain can’t tackle climate change without a majority of us ditching gas heating for electric heat pumps.

Here’s the crazy thing: Air-to-air heat pumps that double as AC units are frozen out from the Government’s main grant scheme for heat pumps. There’s £7,500 grants on offer, but only for heat pumps that don’t cool your home. The rationale for this policy is twofold. First, homes with air-to-air heat pumps would still be reliant on gas for their hot water unless they took further action. Second, policymakers believe hydronic systems are better suited to British homes and that the priority is reducing the cost of such systems through scale (e.g. building up a supply chain of hydronic heat pump installers).

Both arguments are flawed. First, switching from gas to electric for heating (but not hot water) would still generate large emissions savings. Second, a recent government-commissioned literature review on air-to-air heat pumps found that previous scepticism towards air-to-air was unfounded.

Installing an air-to-air heat pump could also mean taking a big financial hit. Energy Performance Certificate rules based on false data treat efficient air-to-air heat pumps as if they were inefficient space heaters. This is a big problem because a bad EPC score can lock you out of cheaper green mortgages. All in all, it could set you back around £500 a year on top of the cost of installing the pump.

Brits are suffering in the heat for no good reason. Britain Remade thinks that should change. That’s why we’ve created a three point plan to remove the UK’s anti-AC rules and policies.

1. Rewrite ‘Part O’ Building Regs so AC is an option from the start (and not only as a ‘last resort’): The requirement to exhaust all passive means of cooling (e.g. small windows) before considering mechanical cooling should be removed for reversible air-to-air heat pumps. This should apply to the simplified (limits of window sizes) as well as the dynamic (expensive modelling) method.
   
   Additionally, the Mayor of London should update the London Housing Design Standards to be fully in line with Part O. If the Mayor does not, MHCLG should issue a new National Development Management Policy to prevent councils from restricting development with additional overheating regulations.
   

2. Open up Britain’s heat pump subsidy scheme to households installing reversible air-to-air heat pumps: The Boiler Upgrade Scheme’s eligibility criteria should be broadened to allow air-to-air heat-pumps to benefit from grants that are currently only available to hydronic (air-to-water or ground-to-water) systems. This should apply not only to full heating-and-hot-water packages (e.g. air-to-air heat-pump plus an electric or heat-pump water heater), but also to hybrid systems where households keep their gas boiler for hot water. Although the emissions savings will be lower than a complete replacement, current policy makes the perfect the enemy of the good.
   
   The level of grant for heating-only air-to-air systems should be set at a lower rate (around £2,000), while for air-to-air heat-pumps combined with clean hot-water solutions such as a stand-alone heat-pump water heater, the grant level should be set at about £4,000.
   

3. Fix Energy Performance Certificates so installing green tech like air-to-air heat pumps is no longer punished: Under the current SAP/EPC rules, a reversible air-to-air heat-pump is logged as a “secondary heater” with an assumed COP of 1 and an added cooling penalty, while the gas boiler remains the “main” system. As a result, many homes that fit a high-efficiency heat-pump see their EPC score fall, potentially losing access to green-mortgage rates and, if they are a landlord, the ability to let the property in the future.
   
   The regulations should be updated so an air-to-air heat-pump (with or without a retained boiler for hot water) can be treated as the primary heating system, credited with its real tested efficiency, and assessed against time-varying carbon and cost factors that recognise off-peak and solar-powered operation. This simple correction would ensure that installing a low-carbon, demand-flexible heat-pump improves – rather than harms – a property’s official energy rating.

Back our plan? Sign up to Britain Remade’s Cool Britannia campaign!