British homes will need air conditioning to cope with the level of global heating now expected, according to a major report published on Wednesday that says simple fixes such as drawing curtains, opening windows and planting trees will not be enough. The Climate Change Committee said the UK must prepare for a hotter country, where extreme heat becomes routine rather than exceptional.
The warning is stark. The committee said air conditioning should be installed in all care homes and hospitals within the next 10 years, and in all schools within 25 years. It also said the government should set a maximum temperature for working indoors and outdoors, after concluding that periods of extreme heat are likely to become the new normal. Julia King, who helped lead the work, said extreme heat is the most deadly climate impact on the UK and that cooling needs to be rolled out at scale.
The report said the UK should plan for 2C of global heating by 2050, when heatwaves are expected to exceed 40C in every part of the country. It warned that longer hot spells could cause an additional 10,000 heat-related deaths a year. That would come on top of the toll already seen in 2022, when temperatures above 40C were linked to about 3,000 excess deaths. The committee said about nine in 10 UK homes are likely to overheat.
For households, the message is not simply that summer will feel uncomfortable. It is that the country’s buildings, health system and workplaces were designed for a climate that no longer exists. The committee said the UK was built for a climate that does not exist today, and that adaptation will have to reach deep into daily life, from shaded classrooms to cooled wards and safer rules for people working in the heat. Emma Howard Boyd said heat resilience cannot continue to be treated as an afterthought.
There is also a hard practical problem behind the advice. Air conditioning is energy-intensive and accounts for about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet Sam Alvis argued it will have to be part of the answer in a hotter Britain. He said the UK is going to have to get used to being a hot country, and noted that air conditioning can pair well with solar power because demand tends to rise when temperatures do. That tension runs through the report: the country needs more cooling, but cooling can also add to the climate problem if it is not delivered carefully.
The wider adaptation challenge is larger still. The climate crisis is already costing the UK about £60bn a year, or about 2% of GDP, including flood damage and lost crops. The committee warned that the 7m UK properties currently at risk of flooding could rise by 40% by 2050 without action, that peak river flow could be 45% higher, and that sea levels are set to rise by 20cm to 45cm. It said widespread overheating, flooding risk and rising seas will force changes across homes, schools, hospitals and workplaces, not as a future possibility but as a present necessity.
The report lands as attempts to limit warming to 1.5C under the Paris agreement appear likely to fail, making adaptation more urgent across the board. For Britain, that means the question is no longer whether heat waves will arrive, but how quickly the country can retrofit itself before the next one does. The people most exposed — older patients, schoolchildren and workers in unprotected spaces — are the ones who will feel the delay first.
