For quite some time, I wondered why we in Europe make such a dramatic issue out of heat. In other parts of the world, India for example, temperatures of 40°C combined with high humidity have been part of everyday life for generations. People, businesses, and infrastructure have adapted to these conditions.
At least, that was my assumption. Spoiler: It was wrong.
What I had not considered is that these regions are facing the same reality as everywhere else: temperatures are rising. The baseline itself is changing. What was once considered an extreme event is becoming more frequent, longer lasting, and more difficult to manage.
This raises an important question: How do countries and companies cope with increasing heat if they do not have unlimited access to electricity, cooling infrastructure, and modern buildings? And perhaps the even more uncomfortable question: Could our own systems handle it if everyone relied on conventional air conditioning at the same time?
The answer is not as simple as we might like.
Cooling Has a Hidden Cost
Modern air conditioning is an impressive technology. It allows us to create comfortable environments even when outdoor temperatures become extreme.
But physically, cooling is not free. A conventional air conditioning system works by compressing and expanding refrigerants, using phase changes between liquid and gas to move heat from one location to another. The challenge is that heat is not naturally moving in the direction we want. Cooling means forcing heat against its natural flow. That requires energy. And the hotter the outside environment becomes, the harder the system has to work.
There is another factor that is often overlooked: buildings are never perfectly isolated. Heat always finds a way in. Through walls, roofs, windows, doors, and ventilation systems, external heat continuously enters the building.
The cooling system is therefore fighting a constant battle against its surroundings.
And there is another hidden energy demand: humidity. Air conditioning does not only cool air. It also removes moisture. Water condenses inside the system, and this phase change releases additional heat—the so-called condensation heat. That heat also needs to be removed. The result is a system that must continuously fight both temperature and humidity. Comfortable for people. Demanding for energy infrastructure.
The Bigger System Challenge
This matters beyond individual buildings. Electricity networks are also affected by extreme heat. During periods of high demand, everyone wants cooling at the same time. But at exactly the moment when electricity demand rises, infrastructure can face additional stress.
Power plants may operate less efficiently. Cooling water availability can become a limiting factor. In some cases, thermal power plants—including nuclear facilities—may face operational restrictions when rivers become too warm to provide sufficient cooling.
The assumption that we can simply install more air conditioning everywhere and solve the problem is therefore questionable. Cooling itself can become part of the challenge.
Learning From Physics: Cooling With Water
But there is another way to think about cooling. Water. Anyone who has stood outside in wet swimwear at 36°C knows the principle. The body starts to feel cold because evaporation removes heat from the skin. This is called evaporative cooling. Whenever a liquid changes into a gas, it requires energy. That energy is taken from the surrounding environment, lowering the temperature of the surface or air nearby.
This principle is the foundation of so-called adiabatic cooling. Instead of using large amounts of energy to move heat mechanically, it uses the natural cooling effect of evaporation. And this brings us back to warmer regions of the world.
Ancient Principles, Modern Applications
Ant Studio from New Delhi developed an innovative cooling concept based on principles that are anything but new. Similar ideas were already used in ancient Egypt and Roman architecture.
The concept is simple: create a large surface area, introduce water, and move air across it.
In their design, water flows over clay tubes while a fan pushes air through the structure. As the water evaporates, the surrounding air cools. The result is not only functional but also visually striking.
Further research shows that the same principle is already being applied in modern cooling systems. Instead of traditional refrigerant-based cooling, these systems use structures designed for maximum surface area—tubes, honeycomb structures, panels, or specialized materials—that are continuously supplied with water while air flows through them.
Depending on the design and environmental conditions, temperature reductions of 10–15°C can be achieved. With significantly lower energy consumption than conventional air conditioning.
What This Means for Industrial Operations
For companies, especially those operating large facilities, the question should not simply be: “How do we install more cooling capacity?”
The better question is: “How do we design our operations for a hotter future?”
That may include better insulation, shading concepts, optimized ventilation, heat-resistant processes, and selective use of cooling technologies. In suitable climates, evaporative or adiabatic systems can become part of the solution—particularly when combined with responsible water management.
Even water consumption can be addressed creatively. Depending on local regulations and quality requirements, treated rainwater can potentially be used as a resource for evaporative cooling instead of relying exclusively on drinking water supplies.
From Fighting Heat to Managing Heat
Climate resilience is often misunderstood as the ability to maintain today’s conditions indefinitely. But the challenge is different. We need to rethink how we design and operate facilities under changing conditions. More cooling is not always the smartest answer. Sometimes the better answer is to work with physics instead of against it.
This is also where governance comes in. Heat resilience is easy to delegate entirely to facilities management—until a heatwave forces production to slow down, damages temperature-sensitive inventory, or exposes how dependent an operation has become on cooling capacity that was never stress-tested for tomorrow’s baseline.
A board does not need to approve insulation specifications or evaporative cooling designs. But it should be able to answer a more fundamental question: does the organization know how its critical operations, equipment, and workforce would perform under sustained extreme heat—and is that exposure tracked as part of the formal risk register, or does it only surface once a heatwave has already caused disruption?
Heat is not going away. The question is whether our approach to managing it is ready for what comes next.
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Previously Published on substack
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