US Olympic and other teams will bring their own AC units to Paris, undercutting environmental plan (apnews.com)

submitted 1 week ago by naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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[-] sandbox@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

I’m not sure what you think is happening here, but energy is just being moved around. Air conditioners aren’t just belching out extra heat. If air conditioners were 100% efficient then they’d break even on heating, but in reality they’re much better than that, pretty much all air conditioners are at least 200% but most are more than that. This is achieved by using the same effect that your refrigerator uses - the radiator behind the freezer isn’t mega hot, right? You could look into vapor-compression refrigeration to learn more.

[-] naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca -2 points 1 week ago

I don't think you understand thermodynamics.

ACs are heat pumps that use temperature differentials to move heat from one side to another. There are inherent losses there (e.g., moving 1000kJ of heat out of a room might take 500kJ, for 200% efficiency). That excess 500kJ is dumped outside into the world along with the 1000kJvof heat, creating a local heat island effect. That's why ACs consume electricity, and that's where the energy goes.

The radiator behind the freezer isn't mega hot because of advances in insulation that limit the amount of heat that needs to be moved and advances in efficiency when operating in specific temperature regimes. A modern fridge consumes 400kWh a year, which averages out to 1.1kWh/day, or 45W continuous draw. That's about the same as a laptop charger. But, well, obviously your house is much larger than your fridge. A fridge might average 400L in volume, but your house averages more like 600000L (1500x more).

If you could move heat around without incurring losses, you could use that to construct a perpetual motion machine. Conservation of energy is a thing and entropy always increases.

[-] Tak@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

Realistically the heat added via electricity is likely going to be added to the compressor itself not the radiator so ofcourse the radiator will be cooler. Also, a laptop charger has to convert from AC to DC so they will always consume more than the listed power output.

If we want to really dive into the depth of the subject though, more thermal energy is created, stored, and radiated in heat islands from cars than air conditioning. You'd be hard-pressed to heat the planet via electricity when the sun is really the thing doing all the work here. If the AC is powered via solar it's a big nothing burger really, especially if the solar panels are in the same geographical area as there would be no exporting energy to different locations.

Now, let's consider all the cars, planes, and asphalt that will be used for the olympics. Seems to me the best way to reduce the effects of climate change in this scenario is to not have the olympics unless it is walked to.