MIT Climate 2024: ‘Historically, heating has contributed more to climate change than cooling has’ – ‘Most of those emissions come from heating’ Not AC – Calls AC a ‘magical’ technology
MIT in 2024: But air conditioning, which made active cooling of our homes and offices possible, was only invented in the early 20th century. “This process is still really magical,” Reinhart says. “There's nothing in nature that you can turn on and suddenly it becomes ice cold on a hot day, right? Because it works against entropy. So it's just really fascinating that we can do this at all.”
By Marc Morano
June 29, 2026
4:48 pm
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/does-heating-or-cooling-our-buildings-contribute-more-climate-changeDecember 18, 2024
Globally, heating creates much more climate pollution than air conditioning, and that’s often true at the level of a single building too.
Humans are a Goldilocks species. There is a small band of temperatures where we feel comfortable, which is why societies spend tremendous amounts of energy heating or cooling our homes and other buildings. We also generate lots of climate pollution in the process: over 5 billion tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) a year, or close to 15% of all the CO2 emissions from humanity’s energy use.1
Most of those emissions come from heating. According to the most recent figures from the International Energy Agency, for every one ton of CO2 our cooling equipment emits, heating technologies contribute another four. But, says Christoph Reinhart, MIT professor and director of the building technology program, that is poised to change as the Earth heats up.
https://www.climatedepot.com/2026/06/29/mit-climate-2024-historically-heating-has-contributed-more-to-climate-change-than-cooling-has-most-of-those-emissions-come-from-heating-not-ac/
