this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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We got one late last year. They used to be very, very rare in the Netherlands, but after record breaking heat over several summers, people had enough and bought air conditioners. Modern dutch houses are well insulated, but you can only keep the heat out for so long. And once the heat does get in, it’s staying in. So, air conditioners to the rescue. Shit’s unliveable otherwise.
We’ve got solar panels, so we can effectively run the air conditioners for free as long as the sun’s out. Same thing with others on our block who have them.
Now, there’s people who will tell you that you shouldn’t use aircon, that it’s bad for the environment, etc. But since we run them off solar, I’m not going to feel bad about it. I bet in ten years every house here will have them, solar or not.
Modern ACs are totally environmentally friendly, they've moved off the effective-but-polluting coolants they used to rely on, and otherwise they're mostly just a fluid pump and a metal case. ACs are only terrible if you look at the bill or where the electricity comes from, so don't feel bad, just correct the people telling you that, because it's not even a compromise if you're running it 100% on solar, it's just great for you and not harmful at all
Indeed that’s what I thought.. that freon was banned in much of the developed world in favor of harmless alternatives. But yet the article says this:
The projected most common modern one is propane, which sounds bad, but is about a thousand times less than our old ones. The amount of propane in an AC is also negligible compared to what even the smallest appliance that burns it would put out, by the simple fact that it is reused for the life of the AC.
As long as an AC is disposed of properly, which is far more likely to be done by someone who cares about their footprint, there's no issue.
I actually like that the landfills in my area specifically won't take refrigerators or air conditioners.
The refrigerant they are probably referring to is R134a or R410a which are much more potent greenhouse gases than CO2. But there are two things to consider:
If the system is maintained correctly, it shouldn't lose any refrigerant, and R410a started being phased out in 2022 for other gases with a lower Global Warming Potential. One of those refrigerants is R744, which has a GWP of 1. That's because R744 is just carbon dioxide.
The bigger issue for me is R134a. It has a lower GWP of 1430 vs ~2100 for R410a, but since R134a is used in cars, it's a lot more likely that it will be released. Some carmakers are transitioning to R1234yf in their air conditioners, which has a GWP of less than 1.
Tl;dr: Refrigerants can cause more global warming per unit volume of gas than CO2, but it's being worked on. Also, refrigerant typically stays inside the machine, while CO2 is emitted by lots of different processes, so it's not a huge environmental disaster when it's just running.
What about geothermal? Outside the city geothermal is easy enough because you can do a shallow horizontal dig.
In the city where you have very little land per house, a geothermal system requires a deep vertical dig. I wonder if being close to the water table would make that an issue. If not, then geothermal should be more energy efficient but of course the dig makes it cost prohibitive.
Or would it make sense to just dig to the water table, and directly use the ground water for cooling, then dump the warmer water back slightly more downstream. Would that work?
I suppose it’s worth mentioning that (I heard) a solar panel can be directly connected to a compressor (thus heat pump or A/C). That means no need for power regulators, inverters, batteries, etc. So that’s cool, if it’s true.
Geothermal solutions are used in The Netherlands, but solar panels are way more popular in general. A quarter of all homes here have a solar panel installation, but only around 10 percent have heat pumps/geothermal installations from what I've read. The average price for a 12 panel home solar installation is around 8.000 euros, whereas the average price of a full geothermal installation runs you around 28.000.
Now, both are promoted as alternative ways of heating your house, since the country's moving away from natural gas for that purpose. But solar's getting cheaper by the day, especially now that demand has slowed. Investing in cheap solar is preferable to geothermal from that perspective.
As for cooling, geothermal does quite well at that from what I've read. Supposedly it's better at dehumidifying, and it's a heating as well as cooling solution, compared to just cooling on older AC's. Thing is, modern air conditioners do that as well - our home installation can be used for heating in the winter as well. I can only tell you from experience that heating and cooling with our AC units works excellent. From what I've read, geothermal users have high satisfaction rates as well.
I'm no expert on things like the water table, so I honestly couldn't tell you how / what / why it would or wouldn't work.