Looking Beyond AC to Cool the Crises: How State and Local Policymakers Can Advance Resilient Cooling Solutions
Record-breaking heat is increasing the need for home cooling solutions to maintain safe and liveable indoor temperatures. Over the last two decades, U.S. consumers and the private sector have leaned heavily into purchasing and marketing conventional air conditioning (AC) systems, such as central air conditioning, window units and portable ACs, to cool down overheating homes. But in the absence of intentional planning, the rapid scaling of AC can intensify dangerous vulnerabilities, including rising energy bills and increased utility debt; surging electricity demand that increases reliance on high-polluting power infrastructure; and increasing pressure on an aging power grid, making it prone to life-threatening blackouts.
To be prepared for more extreme temperatures, Americans need resilient cooling: a holistic strategy that works across three interdependent systems: buildings, communities, and the electric grid. Buildings are the front line of defense, and must be designed to maintain comfortable indoor temperatures both with and without power. Communities comprise the physical environment around and between buildings, where shared infrastructure can cool ambient temperatures, while making indoor environments cooler and safer. And electric grids are the backbone of mechanical cooling, and ensure that buildings and neighborhoods have the power needed to stay safe under extreme conditions. A resilient cooling strategy that works across these systems ensures that everyone can affordably maintain safe indoor temperatures during extreme heat events while reducing power outage risks.
FAS’s new Resilient Cooling Strategy and Policy Toolkit is designed to help state and local policymakers implement resilient cooling in ways that cut costs, protect public health, and reduce grid strain. This toolkit is organized around the Policy Principles for Resilient Cooling, a set of objectives for a robust resilient cooling strategy, and also includes actionable policy options and levers that state and local governments can deploy to expand access to resilient cooling technologies and strategies across technology systems. This work is a part of ongoing translation of FAS’ 2025 Heat Policy Agenda, a national strategy focused on improving extreme heat preparedness, management, and response.
The Policy Principles for Resilient Cooling are:
- Expand Cooling Access and Affordability. Affordable and accessible cooling reduces the population-wide risk of heat-related illness and death. Targeted financial supports, such as subsidies, rebates, and incentives, can reduce both upfront and ongoing costs of cooling technologies, thereby lowering barriers and enabling broader adoption.
- Incorporate Public Health Outcomes as a Driver of Resilience. Indoor heat exposure and heat-driven factors that reduce indoor air quality are health risks. Policymakers can embed heat-related health risks into building codes, energy standards, and guidelines for energy system planning, including by establishing minimum indoor temperature and air quality requirements, integrating health considerations into energy system planning standards, and investing in multi-solving community interventions like green infrastructure.
- Advance Sustainability Across the Cooling Lifecycle. Rising AC demand is intensifying the problem it aims to solve: ambient extreme heat. This happens as AC increases electricity consumption, prolongs reliance on high-polluting power plants, and leaks refrigerants that release powerful greenhouse gases. Policymakers can adopt codes and standards that reduce reliance on high-emission energy sources and promote low-global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants and passive cooling strategies.
- Promote Solutions for Grid Resilience. The U.S. electric grid is struggling to keep up with rising demand for electricity, creating potential risks to communities’ cooling systems. Policymakers can proactively identify potential vulnerabilities in energy systems’ ability to sustain safe indoor temperatures. Demand-side management strategies, distributed energy resources, and grid-enhancing technologies can ensure its reliability during extreme heat events.
- Build a Skilled Workforce for Resilient Cooling. Resilient cooling provides an opportunity to create pathways to good-paying jobs, reduce critical workforce gaps, and bolster the broader economy. Investing in a workforce that can design, install, and maintain resilient cooling systems can strengthen local economies, ensure preparedness for all kinds of risks to the system, and bolster American innovation.
By adopting a resilient cooling strategy, state and local policymakers can address today’s overlapping energy, health, and affordability crises, advance American-made innovation, and ensure their communities are prepared for the hotter decades ahead.
For more information and insights on solutions to foster resilience to extreme heat, contact us:
- Autumn Burton, Senior Associate, Climate, Health, and Environment, aburton@fas.org
- Grace Wickerson, Senior Manager, Climate and Health, gwickerson@fas.org
- Megan Husted, Climate and Energy Associate, mhusted@fas.org
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