I still find it hard to believe that the USA uses more power in the summer cooling themselves down than they do in the winter heating themselves. This is because the Peoples Republic has traditionally been a cold place, not much given to warm summers…. although I suspect this might change as climate change starts to kick in.
Anyway; if you need to use air conditioning why not make it illegal to sell or install them unless they are connected to solar panels? Isn’t the requirement for air conditioning a warm climate? – which is created by the sun…? I know that they might not be suitable ALL the time – so we hook them up to a wind turbine too – I mean, for crying out loud – you only need any conditioning when it is sunny!!
And how’s this for a radical, dangerous point of view… one of the main by-products of aircon is heat… why not pump this waste heat into the water supply?! You still take warm showers when it is sunny,and yet the heat you have removed from your house you just get rid of instead of using it! Just say to hell with it and pass a law making it illegal to dump the heat if anyone within a 100 meters of you could use it! – and the government pays the cost of putting the necessary pipework in and you get paid in carbon credits for the power the recipient of the heat didn’t need to use.
Come on people! This is basic stuff! – and it is needed for the preservation of our most valuable assett – the small, non-renewable life support system we call Earth.