New residential construction should obviously have AC, but it’s not easy to fix older buildings without driving rents through the roof.
If the building doesn’t have sufficient electrical capacity, that’s an extremely expensive upgrade that ultimately has to be passed on to renters.
Even if there is electrical capacity, the insulation may be far below modern standards. The tenant also has to pay peak time of use electric rates to run the AC during the hot time of day, and unlike a homeowner has no ability to hedge their costs with solar panels.
A lot of California – and, I expect, the area under concern – is arid or semi-arid.
I suspect that it’d be possible to use evaporative coolers. They use much less energy than an air conditioner. Need low humidity to be effective, though.
New residential construction should obviously have AC, but it’s not easy to fix older buildings without driving rents through the roof.
If the building doesn’t have sufficient electrical capacity, that’s an extremely expensive upgrade that ultimately has to be passed on to renters.
Even if there is electrical capacity, the insulation may be far below modern standards. The tenant also has to pay peak time of use electric rates to run the AC during the hot time of day, and unlike a homeowner has no ability to hedge their costs with solar panels.
A lot of California – and, I expect, the area under concern – is arid or semi-arid.
I suspect that it’d be possible to use evaporative coolers. They use much less energy than an air conditioner. Need low humidity to be effective, though.