Can We Solve the Air Conditioning Paradox? - YouTube (1) |||||Кондиционирование|| Kunnen we de paradox van de airconditioning oplossen? - YouTube (1) Podemos resolver o paradoxo do ar condicionado? - YouTube (1)

- Hey, smart people, Joe here.

Almost 70 years ago

builders in this neighborhood in Austin, Texas,

created a radical experiment in the houses around me.

They installed air conditioning.

(objects clattering) |дребезжання

Okay, that might not seem extreme by today's standards

but at the time, central air conditioning was only found

in big public buildings like, offices, hotels,

movie theaters, but not individual homes. |кінотеатри||||

So in an effort to get central air conditioning

to catch on among average middle class homeowners, |||||||власники будин

the builders who were also air conditioning manufacturers,

built these 22 houses, an experimental neighborhood,

where researchers could study the effects of cooling air

on people's health and productivity.

They called it the air conditioned village.

This neighborhood and that weird social experiment

that took place here set in motion a movement

that would have impacts far beyond

what those home builders ever imagined.

Today, air conditioning is one

of the most significant contributors to climate change.

10% of global electricity consumption is used

to cool buildings and worse, the energy that we use

for cooling is on track to triple by 2050.

Running today's cooling systems creates millions of tons

of greenhouse gas emissions,

from running the machines themselves

and the dangerous chemicals inside them.

We've cooled ourselves into a crisis.

This is the paradox of air conditioning.

In a warmer world, more people need to keep cool

to stay healthy and productive.

But air conditioning the way we do it now

is only making the planet hotter.

See the problem?

keeping cool is setting us up for big trouble.

Now, we're not about to give up air conditioning

but we need a better way to do it

and that might just be on the horizon.

(gentle funky music) |фанкова|

Over the centuries, people in hot places

have developed a whole bunch of ways

to keep their homes cool.

Ancient Arabs in North Africans |араби|||африканці

use towers called wind catchers |вежі|||вітровловлю

to drive breezes into dwellings. ||потоки повіт||житла

Romans ran water from their aqueduct |||||акведук

through the walls of some homes to cool them

but modern cooling wasn't born until 1902,

when this American engineer named Willis Carrier |||||Вілліс|

harnessed the power of thermodynamics to cool spaces.

This printing factory in Brooklyn, New York,

was too hot and humid, the pages were wrinkling, ||||||||зминалися

ink was running off the paper.

So Carrier designed a machine that used a system

of fans, ducts, heaters, and steam pipes ||канали|обігрівач|||

to control both the humidity and temperature of the factory.

And modern air conditioning was born.

There was a ton of money to be made

if people could be convinced

to put air conditioning in their homes.

So here in the air conditioned village

engineers outfitted 22 houses |оснастили|

with different cooling systems, fans, roofs, shades, |||||дахи|тіні

and insulation. |изоляция

Then over the next year

doctors monitored the family's medical conditions.

Psychologists probed their mental health |досліджували|||

and economists even measured the resident's productivity. |економісти||||мешканця|

- The opportunity of every American

for a still better living standard

will certainly be enhanced.

- So what did the experiment find?

Researchers concluded that not only was AC practical ||||||альтернативний струм|

to use in the home but that those

with air conditioning were healthier, more comfortable ||||більш здорові||

and more productive.

Air conditioning, in other words, made life better

and it completely reshaped life in the 20th century.

Today, air conditioning is in 9 out of 10 American homes.

It enabled a massive population migration

to the American south and west,

which completely reshaped the country's political power ||||країни||

in the late 20th century.

Air conditioning has helped economies explode |кондиционирование воздуха|||| ||||економіки|

in places with unbearable heat, |||нестерпна|

like, Singapore and Dubai. |||Дубай

It's changed the way we build,

making skyscrapers a normal part of every city skyline. ||||||||силует міста

Cooling indoor air protects hundreds of millions of people

from heat stroke and other health risks

from high temperatures, drugs like insulin |||||інсулін

and antibiotics can be stored safely, |антибіотики||||

saving millions more lives.

Today there are roughly 2 billion air conditioners

installed worldwide, and that number is growing fast,

which is good for people's health and happiness

but potentially devastating for the climate.

We need to fix this, but first we need to talk

about how air conditioning actually works.

Warming up a room is pretty easy.

Burning fuel converts chemical bonds in the fuel into heat,

but air conditioners cool by moving heat

from one place to another,

their secret weapon is evaporation.

Maybe you remember your science teacher once saying

that evaporation is a cooling process, but why?

Well, when the temperature of a substance rises

it means its molecules are moving more.

When a molecule in a liquid jiggles enough ||||||покачивается| ||||||тремтить|

to break free of the rest of the liquid,

it takes a little bit of jiggling energy with it, ||||||тряска|||

so the liquid left behind is cooler.

That's why evaporation lowers temperatures

in air conditioning.

(gentle music) (birds chirping)

Here's how a typical air conditioner works. |||||кондиціонер|

A fan pulls in warm air from your home,

where it meets coils full of a liquid called refrigerant. |||||||||холодоагент

Some heat from the air is absorbed by the refrigerant,

which causes the refrigerant to evaporate into gas |||||випаровуватися||

and leaving cooler air behind.

That process moves heat from inside a room to outside,

which is why the exhaust from an AC blows warm air.

Now the liquid refrigerant is ready

to start the evaporation process all over again.

This is called the vapor compression cycle.

It was the idea behind Carrier's very first air conditioner |||||Керрі||||

in 1902, and it is driven virtually every air conditioner ||||приводиться|майже всі|||

and refrigerator for that matter since.

But there's no such thing as a thermodynamic free lunch.

The compressor and the fans inside air conditioners |компресор||||||

eat up a ton of energy and the hotter the weather,

the more energy that they need.

During some heat waves, ACs can account ||||кондиционеры|| ||||кондиціонери||

for up to 70% of local electricity demand.

In September, 2022, for example, evening temperatures

in California soared over 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

The power grid straining to run millions |||перевантаження|||

of air conditioners almost collapsed. ||||майже зламали

Now today, fewer than 20% of people

in major developing countries like Indonesia, India

and Nigeria have any air conditioning at all. |Нігерія||||||

But as the middle class in those countries grows

the number of air conditioning units could triple by 2050.

And since cooling units take warm air

inside buildings and push it outside,

more indoor air conditioning could raise daily temperatures

in some cities by several degrees.

All of those new air conditioners will require

an estimated 2,000 gigawatts of new power production, ||гигаватт|||| ||гігаватів||||

which, if it's not green energy, could make

current global warming emissions targets impossible.

But energy use isn't the only climate threat

from air conditioners.

You see, the refrigerants |||хладагенты |||холодоагенти

inside air conditioners are nasty pollutants on their own

and they used to be even worse.

In the 1980s, scientists discovered the main refrigerants

used at the time called CFCs, |||||ХФУ |||||фреони

were destroying the ozone layer.

So in 1987, nations signed a treaty to ban them |||||договор||заборонити їх|

and companies replaced them with refrigerants called HFCs, |||||||ГФУ |||||||ГФК

which are generally found in today's models.

You can think of these as refrigerants 1.0

and they are a climate nightmare because it turns out

that HFCs are 100s to 1,000s

of times more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide.

So when air conditioners leak

or they're disposed of improperly, ||утилізуються||неправильно

all of that greenhouse pollution hits the atmosphere

and well, that's a huge reason

that HFCs are the fastest growing greenhouse gas.

At this rate air conditioners could unleash ||||||вивільнити

as much warming power as 40 years of carbon pollution

from today's power plants

and that would add almost a full degree Fahrenheit

to global temperatures this century.

(transition whooshes) |свистит |звуковий еф

We need to fix the way that we stay cool.

A part of the solution, of course,

is just making better buildings

that need less air conditioning,

like installing light colored roofs, better windows,

even fans to just pull warm air out of buildings.

But we'll still need air conditioning and refrigerants 1.0

and the air conditioners that use them,

just aren't up to the climate challenges that we face today.

Some researchers have tried developing new refrigerants

that could run today's AC units

but aren't greenhouse gases, but that hasn't been easy.

- So far it's quite tricky to find a refrigerant

that has no issues.

It's either like, it has some toxicity or flammability, ||||||||воспламеняемость ||||||токсичність||займистість

a problem or it is very high greenhouse effect

or ozone depletion or it's expensive. ||зменшення оз|||

- [Host] That's Hicham Johra. ||Хишам|Джохра ||Хічам|Джохра

- I'm associate professor in Denmark at Aalborg University ||||||Аалборг| ||||Данія||Аалборг|

and my work here primarily around everything that relates ||||в основном||||

to energy and indoor environment in buildings.

- Johra and his colleagues in Denmark

are among a handful of scientists exploring solid materials

that we might use for cooling in the future.

Refrigerants 3.0, explaining how they work though

is a little tricky.

- Yeah, yeah, thermodynamics is not always a very intuitive.

- Okay, to get an idea of how these solid refrigerants

might actually work, grab a thick rubber band.

Rubber is actually a really weird solid

because if you stretch it really fast, it feels warm,

you can try this, okay, put it against your lip,

it's really sensitive to temperature

and stretch it really fast.

You feel that? It feels warm.

Now keep it stretched and release it really quick.

It feels cool.

Why is that?

Rubber is made of loosely packed chain like molecules,

we call polymers.

And when a rubber band is relaxed,

those chains are all tangled up

and don't have very much order to them.

Another way of saying that is their entropy is high.

When we stretch a rubber band,

it's molecules get more ordered, the entropy is lower

and when you release it,

the polymers jumble back up and the entropy increases again. ||беспорядок|||||||

There's some complicated physics and thermodynamics

and math going on here under the hood

but basically when the entropy goes down, this system,

this rubber band gives off heat

and when the entropy goes up,

the system takes in heat from around it, it gets cooler.

Rubber is one of a rare class of solids that do this,

where physical forces make them absorb

or give off heat.

They're called caloric materials.

Scientists are testing caloric materials

that change temperature when they're stretched,

squeezed under pressure, charged with electricity

or put near strong magnets,

hoping that they might give us a whole new generation

of refrigerants that are better for the environment

than liquid or gas refrigerants.

- They don't have the same problems

as vapor compression refrigerant,

'cause they're solid, they're not gas.

They will not go in the atmosphere,

so they will not problematic

for the ozone or greenhouse effect.

If you would use like a solid refrigerant that is, you know,

contains lead for example, and then you circulate some water |||||||циркулю||

or some coolant in it and you have leakage, ||охлаждающая жидкость|||||| ||охолоджуюча||||||витік

then of course it can be a problem of toxicity.

- But while these next generation refrigerants

have shown promise in small scale lab experiments,

they have still got a long way to go

before they're ready to meet the challenge

and the scale of how the world uses air conditioning.

- The main concern, it's more the price

when they are based on rare-earth materials

and also the complexity to manufacture them

and also the durability, how they will last over time.

- We don't get to rewrite the rules of thermodynamics.

Cooling buildings is just a hugely energy intensive

thing to do.

We've got to escape that cooling paradox as soon as we can.

But solutions like caloric materials

are unfortunately still in their infancy. |||||дитячому ві

(birds chirping) (gentle music)

There's a lot we can do now

by making buildings just get less hot,

painting roofs lighter colors,

installing better windows and insulation,

that kinda boring Home Depot stuff. ||||Депо|

But we need to change the way we stay cool in a big way.

There's a lot at stake regarding the future |||||щодо||

of air conditioning.

And for me, here in Austin, it's personal.

My family and I live in a city

that routinely gets over 40 days a year, |регулярно|||||

in which temperatures rise over 100 degrees.

Most years during the 20th century