PARIS, July 18 – As southern France swelters through the hottest week on record, with temperatures in the Rhône valley reaching 44.6°C, a new social fault line has opened. The affluent, it appears, have retreated into air-conditioned bubbles while the rest suffer. This summer’s heatwave has exposed a stark inequality: access to cooling is now as divisive as access to central heating was in the 19th century.
Data from France’s meteorological service confirms that nights are now 2.1°C warmer than the 1981-2010 baseline, meaning the body has no respite. Yet last year, only 8% of French households had air conditioning, compared with 90% in the United States. Small split-system units proliferate in Parisian apartments, but their installation is costly and their electricity consumption punishing. France’s power grid, already strained by nuclear outages, is now facing evening demand spikes that rival winter peaks.
“We are seeing a two-tier thermal comfort system,” says Dr. Alizée Marchand, a sociologist at the University of Toulouse. “Those who can afford the investment and the electricity bills live in a different climate zone from those who cannot.” The result is a quiet health crisis. During the August 2023 heatwave, emergency room visits for heatstroke rose 35% across the country, with the highest rates in low-income districts of Marseille and Lyon.
Meanwhile, across the Channel, the UK is confronting its own energy contradictions. The government’s energy security strategy, unveiled in April, heavily promotes heat pumps and electric vehicles but says almost nothing about the coming surge in cooling demand. According to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, only 3% of UK homes have dedicated air conditioning, but a 2023 survey by the Royal Institute of British Architects found that 40% of new‑build luxury apartments now include it. Without a policy shift, the UK risks importing the French divide.
The physics is merciless. As the planet warms, the need for cooling is a basic thermodynamic necessity. But every air conditioning unit that runs on a fossil fuel grid accelerates the very warming that necessitates its use. The global cooling sector already accounts for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions. In France, where 70% of electricity is nuclear, the immediate impact is lower, but the waste heat rejected into city streets worsens the urban heat island effect, making the outdoors even more unbearable for those without cooling.
The technological solution is staring us in the face: efficient heat pumps can both heat and cool, and when powered by renewables, they can break the cycle. But adoption remains slow. French policymakers are now debating a “cooling obligation” for new developments, similar to the 1970s insulation requirements. The UK, meanwhile, has announced a £1.5 billion social housing decarbonisation fund, but critics note that it focuses on heating improvements, not on the equally vital need for passive cooling and affordable air conditioning.
This is not a matter of comfort. At 40°C wet-bulb temperature, even healthy young people risk hyperthermia within hours. The threshold is being crossed with increasing frequency. In Chennai, India, where 55% of households have air conditioning, the death rate during heatwaves is 30% lower than in cities without it. Cooling is a climate adaptation tool, not a luxury.
The coming debate will force governments to choose: let cooling become a privilege of the rich, or treat it as a public health necessity. The data are clear on the physical cost. What remains unclear is whether politics can keep pace with the weather.
