Always taboo, air conditioning is often the only solution in boiler housing

In her Parisian home in the 1970s, Amélie, 42 years old and whose first name was changed at her request, would have liked things to be different. “I'm rather green, I do everything for it, but I think I'm going to end up installing an air conditioner,” she laments to AFP.

At home, "from June to September, it is often 4 degrees warmer than outside and sometimes up to 30-31°C on the days when it is the hottest."

A constant heat which weighs on the morale of this accustomed to teleworking, mother of a little boy.

Owner but not enjoying sufficient income to consider major work - the only ones that allow significant state aid -, Amélie for a time fell back on solutions that were easier to install, such as shutters or shutters. awnings, before being disappointed by their low efficiency or the difficulties posed by the rules of your building.

Like Amélie, Vincent, a 38-year-old self-employed worker who did not wish to give his last name, cannot bring himself to buy an air conditioner in his Toulouse apartment for ecological and economic reasons. But the solutions available to him as a tenant – living with “curtains and shutters closed” – do not prevent him from experiencing an ordeal at night and from working all day shirtless, without being able to heat food or (s). )sit on the couch."

For many tenants like Vincent, the only solution: mobile air conditioners.

“All the residents of my building are now equipped with air conditioners on wheels,” says Ms. K., 48, to the Abbé Pierre Foundation, which is publishing a new edition of its study on kettle housing on Thursday, noting that more half of French people were too hot at home in 2023.

190.000 lives saved per year

"There is a race between low-tech adaptation - better insulation, shutters, awnings - and the easy short-term solution, particularly mobile air conditioning" explains Manuel Domergue, director, to AFP. studies from the Abbé Pierre Foundation.

And as air conditioning "is not expensive to purchase" and has immediate effectiveness, "if there is no public policy to promote virtuous adaptation, such as shutters or awnings, obviously, It’s the mal-adaptation, the air conditioning, which will win out,” says Manuel Domergue.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that air conditioning saves lives worldwide: 190.000 per year between 2019 and 2021, with living in a home with an air conditioner reducing the risk of death by three quarters.

However, if 78% of North Americans and 47% of Asians had air conditioning in 2022 according to the IEA, this is the case for only 19% of Europeans.

Reluctance to air conditioning is sometimes very pronounced in certain European regions. In the canton of Geneva in Switzerland, an individual must meet very specific conditions to be authorized to install an air conditioner at home, such as obtaining a medical certificate, explains the Cantonal Energy Office.

The Olympic village of the Paris Olympic Games was also widely criticized by the delegations for its lack of air conditioning for ecological reasons. The latter ended up ordering 2.500 mobile air conditioners for their athletes.

In 2020, researchers from Cired (under the supervision of the CNRS) and the Météo-France research laboratory modeled the impact on the Paris region that a heatwave similar to that experienced by France in 2003 would have, according to whether air conditioning or alternative solutions are used.

In the second case, by combining an increase in green spaces and home renovation work, Ile-de-France residents would still be exposed 6 hours a day to a temperature above 32°C.

Alternative solutions "do not appear to be sufficient to negate the thermal stress caused by future heat waves if no air conditioning is used," the researchers concluded.