Britain needs an air-con revolution

‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.’ So goes the famous Noël Coward lyric, mocking the English willingness to head outside on baking hot days. Today, however, we no longer need to go out into the midday sun to suffer. We have now built a country that struggles to cope with the heat even when we stay indoors.

As this week’s heatwave has shown, Britain must change its approach to cooling down indoors. Above all, we need much more air conditioning in Britain. While around 90 per cent of homes in the US and Japan have it, only three per cent of British homes can say the same.

The same lack is apparent in our public infrastructure, especially our schools. As temperatures climbed this week, at least one thousand schools across England and Wales sent children home early or shut entirely. Pupils were forced to learn online, and working parents were sent scrambling for childcare. Some pupils were forced to sit exams in sweltering school halls-turned-saunas.

Our hospitals, offices and trains have been similarly affected by the intense heat. MRI scanners have stopped working, offices are shutting and trains are breaking down. In fact, it is so bad that two hospitals have declared critical incidents and cancelled hundreds of appointments.

These serious problems are the result of choices made by successive governments – and they follow a pattern that is all too familiar. Whether it is prisons, housing, welfare, water, migration, transport or energy – the same cycle repeats itself. Politicians repeatedly promise to address an emerging problem, but ideology, political incompetence and state incapacity prevent them from ever doing so.

As it stands, Britain’s energy system would likely struggle to cope with the demand that air conditioning in every home, school, hospital and office would place on it. Indeed, the system struggled to cope this week, with the National Energy System Operator issuing a notice warning of tight supplies.

This is not a surprise. We have not built the storage capacity necessary, and our reliance on renewables means that our energy supply is unreliable. Wind turbines are often quiet on the still, hot, high-pressure days that are driving the demand for cooling at the moment. On Wednesday morning, wind was only responsible for around 12 per cent of Britain’s energy consumption. Solar was responsible for just six per cent. To fulfil the necessary demand, Britain must fix its energy system. It needs to be secure, reliable and have sufficient capacity, whatever the weather.

There are other problems, too. For decades, we have known that our summers are going to become warmer, yet we have actively made it harder to cool ourselves effectively. Net Zero objectives have been pursued by government departments whatever the cost. In fact, in some cases, it has led to council-planning officers ordering residents to remove air-conditioning units. In one Camden building, officers told residents to remove the unit and cool their house by opening their windows and balcony doors instead.

Changes made by this government swept away many of the planning restrictions on heat pumps, but these reforms excluded air-conditioning systems, which have been trapped in the same labyrinth of permissions and restrictions as before. In some cases, this has led to the disabling of the air-conditioning feature on reversible heat pumps.

In short, the British state has decided that a machine designed to keep your home warm should be encouraged, but a system designed to cool it down must not. To our political class, the impact of a machine on energy consumption matters more than the benefits it delivers to the communities using it. If it helps deliver an ideological ambition, like Net Zero, it is encouraged. If it helps schools and offices open, hospitals to function, trains to run and people to sleep at night, people are left to battle the Westminster planning system.

The story of Britain’s air-conditioning troubles is therefore about much more than this week’s heatwave. Rather, it is a symbol and a case study of how the modern British state operates.

The solutions are not complicated. Abandon the de facto Net Zero clampdown on air conditioning, liberalise the planning laws so that the right to build an air-conditioning unit is the same as a heating pump, and build a diverse energy system capable of supplying cheap, secure, reliable energy.

Above all, Westminster must rediscover a basic principle that has been undermined in recent decades: it can just do stuff. It can ensure that schools stay open, our hospitals keep running and our homes stay cool. All we need now is a government willing to do it.

Dr Lawrence Newport is the CEO and co-founder of Looking for Growth, the political movement to end decline and save Britain.