The overall effect of air conditioners is a heating effect equal to the amount of electricity consumed. Are you surprised?
Here's the
explanation:
An air conditioner, like a heat pump in the cooling
mode, moves heat from inside the house to outside the house. You might
think the overall effect would be zero...that the amount of cooling
inside the house is equal to the amount of heating outside the house.
However this is not the case.
The reason is that in order to move the heat from
inside the house to outside the house, you used electricity. The
electricity is converted to heat by friction in the air conditioner's
fans and compressors, and by heating of wires in the fan and compressor
motors.
So air conditioners heat the planet in the three ways: leakage of refrigerants that increase global warming, generation of CO2 in production of electricity consumed by the air conditioner (to the extent that fossil fuels are used to generate the electricity), and in the heat (however modest) directly added to the outside air by the air conditioner.
Does this third, direct, warming effect of
air conditioners contribute significantly to global warming? I don't think so; if it did, one would hear more
about it. However, if you are interested in how you might put the heat from air conditioners to positive use, perhaps you would like to learn about heat pumps: https://makingheatpumpssuccessful.blogspot.com/
