Europe’s Come-to-AC Moment

In stifling apartments and sweaty row houses in England, Germany, and even Scandinavia, some Europeans are considering a very American idea: They really need an air conditioner.One of their most accessible options, though, might feel unfamiliar to anyone accustomed to central air. Among Europe’s commonly used types of air conditioning is a clunky, inefficient unit that stands a few feet high and has a wide exhaust tube meant to go out a window. Such units are typically “a panic-buy on a hot weekend,” Brian Motherway, the head of energy efficiency at the International Energy Agency, told me. People grab the first machine they see and end up living with it for a decade, he said. Many people leave the window gap around the exhaust tube uncovered, letting hot air right back in. Walking down a Paris street last week, I saw three different stores where such units stood beside a door propped open by the tube.Sales of air conditioners of all sorts are climbing in Britain too. I’ve lived in London for 25 years, and I don’t recall ever hearing anyone talk about buying a home air conditioner—until three acquaintances mentioned, unprompted, on the same sweltering day, that they had purchased one, or were considering it.Much of Europe wasn’t built for air-conditioning, or for coping with hot weather at all. In Britain, for instance, which has been long accustomed to cool summers and dark, rainy winters, older houses like mine are poorly insulated and often leave inhabitants baking when outside temperatures climb. But many newer buildings are designed to retain heat and maximize sunlight, making them also poorly suited for the new normal, Andy Love, a sustainability consultant who founded Shade the UK, an advocacy group that presses for smarter building regulations, told me. However sleek and modern the big glass apartment towers going up around London look, he said that many residents are “moving into those flats in the winter to then find out in the summer, it’s a furnace.” Bri