I’m from Australia. And I just read a 20 Minutes article, and it is like watching Swiss politicians attempt to rediscover thermodynamics by committee. SVP says: “Tous les cantons autour de nous ont des politiques moins restrictives. On doit flexibiliser.” That is correct. Geneva’s current rules are absurdly restrictive. But simply allowing everyone to buy some inefficient portable monobloc with a hose hanging through an open window is not a serious cooling policy either. Then we get the opposite side, where air conditioning is dismissed as an “hérésie climatique” and the answer is apparently to renovate and insulate buildings. Here is the basic concept our politicians appear unable to process: Insulation is not refrigeration!! Insulation slows down heat entering a building. Exterior blinds, reflective roofs, trees, ventilation and better windows can reduce heat gains. All of that should absolutely be done. But none of it actively removes heat from a room. Once an apartment has absorbed heat through its walls, roof, windows, occupants and appliances, insulation does not magically generate cold air. If it is still 27°C outside at 2 a.m., opening the windows will not produce a 22°C bedroom. Thermal mass may delay the temperature peak, but without sufficiently cool nights it can also store the day’s heat and release it while people are trying to sleep. The Greens themselves admit that air conditioning is “une solution efficace et nécessaire, en particulier pour les personnes vulnérables.” They also say that summer cooling should be treated with the same importance as winter heating. Good. Then follow that logic to its conclusion? Nobody responds to a freezing apartment in January by telling the tenant that wall insulation should eventually solve everything. We install heating and improve the building envelope. Summer requires exactly the same approach: reduce the thermal load and provide equipment capable of controlling the indoor temperature. This artificial choice between “air conditioning” and “renovation” is technically illiterate . A competent policy would cover the complete HVAC system: exterior shading, roof treatment and proper insulation efficient reversible heat pumps or fixed split systems instead of portable monobloc garbage controlled ventilation and humidity management enforceable indoor-temperature standards for housing and workplaces active cooling in hospitals, EMS, schools, nurseries and other vulnerable settings efficiency, noise and refrigerant requirements solar generation, grid planning and demand management batteries and energy storage infrastructures district cooling where density makes it practical Australia and other hot countries already understand this. Passive design reduces the amount of cooling required. Efficient mechanical systems remove the remaining heat. The two approaches complement each other. Meanwhile, Switzerland behaves as though every ordinary piece of infrastructure must first be reinvented through fifteen years of parliamentary debates, cantonal exceptions, medical certificates and ideological theatre. The UDC sees the immediate problem but reduces the answer to easier access to appliances. The Greens see the structural problem but keep presenting load reduction as though it were temperature control. Both are describing half of a functioning system. Stop debating “renovation or air conditioning.” That is the summer equivalent of debating “insulation or heating” in January. We need both. We need actual HVAC engineering. We need to stop treating a safe indoor temperature as a decadent luxury. And we need to copy solutions that already work instead of pretending Switzerland can negotiate with thermodynamics. /rant submitted by /u/a_shootin_star
Originally posted by u/a_shootin_star on r/Switzerland