A recent post about Paris caught my attention. Someone said they had installed three air conditioners at home and spent more than EUR 8,000.
That number feels strange if you are used to the Chinese market. In many Chinese cities, buying an air conditioner is almost routine. You order online, an installer comes to your home, and even if there is some friction, the service chain is mature enough to make the purchase feel normal.
Europe is different.
The unit itself is not the only cost. Installation may be harder than the purchase. Is the home an old building? Can the wall be drilled? Can the wiring handle the load? How much will labor cost? How long will approval and scheduling take?
So the problem is not that Europe has no cooling demand. The problem is that the demand is constrained by buildings, labor, regulation, power systems, and habit.
India Is a Grid Story. Europe Is a Retrofit Story.
The India cooling story is easier to understand as an emerging-market power-system problem.
The International Energy Agency has noted that in India, each 1 degree C increase in outdoor temperature in 2024 could correspond to roughly 7 GW of additional peak power demand, and that figure could rise further by 2030 without stronger efficiency measures. When millions of air conditioners turn on during a heat wave, the peak load arrives quickly.
That makes India's cooling problem a grid problem.
Europe is different. It is more like an old system being forced to retrofit itself.
Reuters recently reported on heat in Paris and London. One young resident in Paris lived in a 9-square-meter attic apartment. During the heat wave, the room became oven-like within hours. Soap melted. Pressure pushed a cork out of a wine bottle. At night, the resident could only sleep under a wet towel.
That is not just discomfort. It affects health, work, concentration, and basic urban life.
London faces a similar issue. The London mayor's office has estimated that around one million homes may be at risk of overheating. Reuters also described a young resident in a Victorian-era London home deciding whether to take hot public transport to an air-conditioned office, before staying home and working beside a fan in a hot kitchen.
These sound like small personal stories. But if this becomes the normal summer condition for a large share of a city, then cooling moves from a comfort product to a housing, health, labor-productivity, and urban-resilience issue.
European Homes Were Built for a Different Climate Logic
Many European homes were designed for winter. Thick walls, insulation, sealed interiors, and limited ventilation were meant to keep heat inside.
During heat waves, that design turns against the resident.
The European Environment Agency has noted that active cooling in European homes has historically been lower than in comparable regions, but demand is rising. Many buildings were constructed before modern thermal standards, and building energy performance remains a structural weakness. The IEA has also warned that cooling demand can add pressure to electricity systems and emissions.
This is the difficult part: Europe needs cooling, but it cannot simply copy the air-conditioning path of Asia or the United States.
French officials cited by Reuters pointed out that air conditioners move indoor heat outdoors, increase electricity load, and may worsen the urban heat island effect. A passive-building specialist in Athens made a similar point: many Greek homes already have cooling systems, but many apartments lack modern ventilation, and widespread AC use can push waste heat into the city.
Europe may not only need machines. It needs a way to put machines into old homes and old cities without breaking the energy, building, and public-space logic around them.
Asian AC Makers Are Seeing Demand, but the Hard Part Comes After Sales
Recent European heat waves are already helping Asian manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, Midea, and Mitsubishi Electric. Samsung said key markets including Italy, Spain, and France saw double-digit growth in the first half of the year. LG said one Korean production line had been running at full capacity since April. Midea said heat waves in the last two weeks of May pushed sales higher, and its PortaSplit model sold out in some channels, with second-hand prices even moving above new-unit prices.
That may signal a long-term change in European consumer behavior.
In the past, many households could still think: endure the heat for a few days and it will pass.
Now more people are discovering that endurance is no longer enough.
But the business does not end with the sale.
Midea told Reuters that installing an air conditioner in Europe can cost more than EUR 1,000. That is only the installation cost. Old buildings may be difficult to modify. Waiting times can be long. Many families are not unwilling to buy. They may simply not know how to move from purchase to legal, safe, and reliable installation.
That is where Chinese companies need to pay attention.
India is a scale-expansion market.
Europe is a delivery-and-retrofit market.
The first tests channels. The second tests engineering.
Chinese manufacturers are very strong at supply chains and manufacturing efficiency. Producing the unit is not the hard part. Lowering product cost is also not the hard part.
The harder task is turning that manufacturing capability into a localized solution that European households, installers, regulators, and energy systems can accept.
From Appliance Company to Building-Energy Company
Europe may not reward only low prices.
For years, Europe focused more on winter heating than summer cooling. Heat pumps have been promoted as a way to replace gas boilers and reduce building emissions. Many heat pumps can also provide cooling.
That means future European home retrofits may not be about buying one standalone air conditioner. They may involve heating, cooling, insulation, ventilation, electricity prices, building rules, and installation capacity as one package.
This pushes AC manufacturers into a different category.
Are they only appliance companies, or can they become building-energy system companies?
There is also a cultural shift. A European summer used to mean open windows, shade, vacation, evening air, and enduring a few hot days. In some places, air conditioning carried a sense of American-style waste.
Climate is changing that judgment.
In a simple product market, companies compete on price. In a complex retrofit market, they compete on service.
Chinese companies have been very good at turning complex manufacturing into mass-market products. If they want to stand in Europe, they may need to do the reverse: turn mass-market products back into complex local services.
The machine is only the beginning.
Europe is buying a repair to an old way of living. And repairing an old system is often harder than building a new one.
Sources
- International Energy Agency, *Staying cool without overheating the energy system*
- International Energy Agency, *The Future of Cooling*
- European Environment Agency, *Cooling buildings sustainably in Europe*
- Reuters, *As Europe roasts in a heat wave, Asia's air-con makers grab some cool cash*, 2026-06-25
- Reuters, *Hot and stuck in Paris and London, homes not built for heat*, 2026-06-26