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Article: Air conditioning addiction: pumps up costs, lowers productivity.(TECHNOLOGY)
- Article from:
- Real Estate Weekly
- Article date:
- July 23, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Hagedorn Publication. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Consider the following reality:
Almost one kilowatt hour of electricity out of every five consumed in the US is used to cool buildings.
18% of US electricity consumption is used for air conditioning, a great deal of that in large commercial buildings.
Air conditioning contributes to global warming not only by increasing the use of electricity generated by coal and natural gas but exacerbates the problem by releasing refrigerants into the atmosphere. North America, with only 6% of the worlds population, accounts for nearly 40% of the world's refrigerant market.
Worse yet, much of America's conditioned air is going literally out the ...