An Uncomfortable Truth: Air-Conditioning and Sustainability in Asia

Over the coming two decades Asia will be the main driver of a 40% increase in global energy consumption. Ambitions for a more sustainable future in the region are severely compromised by the widespread and rapid take-up of energy-intensive methods for cooling the built environment. For the majority of Asia's countries buildings account for more than 50% of all national greenhouse gas emissions. With around half that energy consumption typically associated with cooling or heating interior spaces, national carbon footprints have increased dramatically in recent decades through the introduction of electronic air-conditioning. This paper argues such trends are unsustainable and low-carbon alternatives for environmental comfort are required urgently. It traces shifts in how air has been ‘materially imagined’ over the last century or so in Asia and how this bears upon the future of sustainable urbanism. Air-conditioning is seen as pivotal to transformations in urban design and living, such that two phases of modernity are identified: preconditioned and conditioned. By foregrounding the need for low-carbon alternatives, the paper advocates for an alternative, low-carbon regime of thermal governance.