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What you should know about this indicator

  • Air conditioning ownership has been rising across major economies, driven by growing incomes in hot-climate countries and by more frequent and intense heatwaves.
  • Values for regions ("Europe" and "Southeast Asia") are the IEA's own regional estimates and are not aggregated by Our World in Data from individual countries.
Share of households with air conditioning
IEA
Percentage of households equipped with air conditioning.
Source
International Energy Agency (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
July 20, 2026
Next expected update
July 2027
Date range
2015–2025
Unit
%

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Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

International Energy Agency – Share of households with air conditioning

The International Energy Agency (IEA) tracks the adoption of air conditioning across major economies and regions as part of its analysis of cooling and electricity demand. This data reports the share of households equipped with air conditioning in selected countries and regions.

The adoption of air conditioning has been accelerating around the world, driven by rising incomes in hot-climate economies and by record-breaking heatwaves in regions that previously had limited cooling demand. Cooling is one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand in buildings.

Retrieved on
July 20, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/cooling-a-hotter-world-el-nino-meets-strong-growth-in-global-electricity-demand
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Energy Agency (2026). Cooling a hotter world: El Niño meets strong growth in global electricity demand. IEA, Paris.
Supplemented with 2018 estimates from: International Energy Agency (2018). Percentage of households equipped with AC in selected countries, 2018. IEA, Paris.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) tracks the adoption of air conditioning across major economies and regions as part of its analysis of cooling and electricity demand. This data reports the share of households equipped with air conditioning in selected countries and regions.

The adoption of air conditioning has been accelerating around the world, driven by rising incomes in hot-climate economies and by record-breaking heatwaves in regions that previously had limited cooling demand. Cooling is one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand in buildings.

Retrieved on
July 20, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/cooling-a-hotter-world-el-nino-meets-strong-growth-in-global-electricity-demand
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Energy Agency (2026). Cooling a hotter world: El Niño meets strong growth in global electricity demand. IEA, Paris.
Supplemented with 2018 estimates from: International Energy Agency (2018). Percentage of households equipped with AC in selected countries, 2018. IEA, Paris.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

The main time series (2015 onwards) for China, Europe, India, Japan, Southeast Asia and the United States comes from the IEA's 2026 commentary on cooling and electricity demand. We supplemented it with the IEA's 2018 estimates for Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and South Korea, which are only available for that single year.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of households with air conditioning”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “Energy”. Data adapted from International Energy Agency. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260720-093607/grapher/households-air-conditioning.html [online resource] (archived on July 20, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

International Energy Agency (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

International Energy Agency (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Share of households with air conditioning – IEA” [dataset]. International Energy Agency, “Share of households with air conditioning” [original data]. Retrieved July 22, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260720-093607/grapher/households-air-conditioning.html (archived on July 20, 2026).

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