As the world warms, many are resorting to the pleasant, cool relief of air conditioning in places where it was once a rarity. According to new data, San Franciscans do not appear to have embraced this trend.
The city recently surpassed Seattle as the least air-conditioned metro area in the country, according to the 2021 American Housing Survey released by the US Census Bureau.
The survey says that about 45% of the 1.8 million residential units in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area have primary air conditioning, compared to a national average of 92%. Only about 34% of San Francisco homes have central air conditioning, while 11% use indoor air conditioning.
That puts us behind Seattle, where about 53% of homes now have air conditioning, compared to 44.3% in 2019.
Most of this probably has to do with our climate — for the most part, summers in San Francisco have remained notoriously cool, while places like the Pacific Northwest have endured brutal heatwaves year after year. According to the National Weather Service, this is because the cold waters of the Pacific produce a temperature inversion that results in a foggy sea layer.
Even so, the Bay Area still experiences the occasional record-breaking heat event, and some local air conditioning experts say the number of home air conditioners they install is increasing significantly every year.
“One year we’re doing 10, next year 20, next year 40. Every year it’s doubling,” said Frank Cichetti, a senior HVAC service technician at Cabrillo Plumbing, Heating and Cooling in San Francisco.
There’s more to it than just hotter summers, Cichetti says — for example, financial incentives from the California Public Utilities Commission have encouraged many Californians to install heat pumps that heat and cool homes electrically. He added that many residents were also looking for air conditioning after the pandemic hit and started working from home.
“Now everyone turns that little bedroom they haven’t spent time in into a home office and realizes it’s 2:00 p.m. and it’s boiling hot in here,” Cichetti said.
Climate change remains one of the main reasons behind the rise in air conditioning, Cichetti said.
“No matter how you feel about climate change, it is there and very real. And it’s getting warmer,” said Cichetti.
