it’s so crazy that areas of the country where air conditioning wasn’t really needed for comfort in the past are now places where major heat wave events can make a lack of one a safety issue.
The Portland Clean Energy Fund’s Cooling Portland offers a free energy-efficient portable air conditioning unit to qualified city residents with lower incomes.
If one of your stated goals is to “boost climate resilience,” why would you use by far the least energy efficient air conditioner form factor? Window air conditioners not only cost less up front per unit of cooling power, they are double digit percentages more efficient meaning they not only have significantly a lower carbon footprint, they’re cheaper to run which low income residents especially care about.
Technology Connections video with more information.
Your points on window AC units are accurate, but It’s not your interpretation of the headline meaning that the author meant–and it’s a horrible headline given the adjacent relativity of energy usage and environmental impact and their well documented links.
The author apparently decided “climate resilience” was the best way to put into words “reduce dire heat-related impact of surging temperatures on the poor” which is the aim of the program. While window AC units are relatively quick and cheap to install compared to alternatives, they do nothing about the causes, only benefit a small portion of the population, and of course line industry pockets in appliances and energy companies with increased bills. Hope these folks are already on free energy plans because AC was expensive before PGE raised prices 70% in the last 4 years.
Hopefully the program is part of a comprehensive legislation like mandating energy efficient construction codes with warm-climate designs. A bunch of windows on apartment buildings is going to go the way of the dodo in the next 10 years. Who knows, we might start seeing adobe and red tile roofs creep up into Oregon in New construction. So much for the craftsman.
Fair point, thanks!
Hopefully the program is part of a comprehensive legislation like mandating energy efficient construction codes with warm-climate designs. A bunch of windows on apartment buildings is going to go the way of the dodo in the next 10 years. Who knows, we might start seeing adobe and red tile roofs creep up into Oregon in New construction. So much for the craftsman.
I’m in Vancouver Canada and one of the worst things over here is HOAs and stratas not allowing external air conditioners because “they’re ugly.” Do you have the same problem in Portland?
I really think the government needs to overrule HOAs/stratas on this. Air conditioners are needed to not fucking die in the summer and climate change will only make that worse, and they’re not allowing us to use the most efficient types of air conditioners.
I bring this up because I live one of those bullshit stratas. ONLY portable air conditioners are allowed at our townhouse complex. They even built it with side swing-style windows so you couldn’t hang window units off them. Which also makes it so you can’t make a proper seal around the exhaust pipe so you end up sucking some of the exhaust air back in. We own the townhouse but we’re not allowed to install mini splits or sliding windows, and even if we did install new windows, we couldn’t use window air conditioners because they’re also ugly. What the fuck is this bullshit?
HOAs are like companies with employee policies; they can write whatever they want–whether it would hold up to legal challenge is another matter.
Portland never had much in the way of HOAs, but since much of the building in the last 25 uears has been in suburbs and condos, HOAs now abound outside the city proper. Air conditioning was never really a thing in Portland–growimg up here I never had it and yeah you had 2 really hot weeks in August and you learned to deal with it; pool, basements, lakes, ocean, etc. the last 10 years have seen significant swings in the weather; drought starting in ~2015 that lasted almost 7 years and of course rising average temperatures that exacerbate seasonal issues. Like BC we have a whole shitload of lumber in OR and it’s been getting ugly and will only get worse.
Those petty preferences work when everyone has internal air, as the average person has increased health impacts with climate change and global warming they will die out–the stupid HOA AC rules(sadly not HOAs).
