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Energy is probably one of your biggest business costs, if not the biggest of all. And it isn’t really a fixed cost any more, simply because the uncertainties around climate change mean it’s harder than ever to predict everyday energy usage.
Will we have an unprecedented early April heat wave that sends thermometers rocketing in the workplace? Or will we have a late frost so severe you need to dial the heating back up just when you thought spring was here? They’re both a lot more likely than they’d have been, even just a few years ago.
So the important question for 2024 is this: what’s the UK weather likely to do? Because climate change naturally makes things less predictable, it’s a tough call. But here are some predictions from the experts.
UK weather predictions for 2024
First, the Met Office. They provide a three month outlook, so what do they predict for February and March 2024? They say the risk of a cold period is slightly higher than normal, which means the chance of ice, fog and snow are increased, and they say it’s a bit less likely to be very wet. But then they go on to say further rainfall is likely given the unusually wet start to the winter.
While this is interesting, when you’re trying to balance your energy budget for the year it isn’t particularly helpful. How are things looking in a more general, wider sense?
For 2024 worldwide the Met Office is predicting something called a ‘two-stage spike in global temperature’, made worse by the latest El Niño event that’s already heating up the Pacific and by humanity’s ongoing emissions. Last time there was an El Nino, in 2016, we saw a dramatic hike in the heat and a world record was broken. 2023 broke records too, and 2024 is set to break more.
Global average temperatures are forecast, for the first time, to break the 1.5 °C record in 2024, rising by anything between 1.34 °C and 1.58 °C above the average for the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period against which they’re measured. This is the 11th year in a row where temperatures have climbed 1.0 °C or more above their pre-industrial levels.
All this falls directly in line with the ongoing global warming trend of 0.2 °C per decade, made worse by this year’s ‘significant’ El Niño. It means two new global temperature record-breaking years in succession are expected, leading the Met Office to forecast a ‘a reasonable chance’ of the coming year temporarily exceeding 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures. While this doesn’t quite break the Paris Agreement it’s a ‘milestone in climate history’ that we really didn’t want to reach.
The heat is going to keep on rising by the look of it, and that means businesses whose products or services are sensitive to heat, or whose employees will suffer unduly from it, need to make sensible preparations.
The best way to keep a business cool
How do you keep your foodservice premises cool enough to meet food safety standards? How do you keep a school cool enough for pupils and teachers to work effectively? How do you keep the office comfortable so people can deliver their best work? And what if your business involves a lot of activity? If it’s a gym or sports centre, people just won’t be able to play and exercise effectively when it’s too hot to move, never mind exert yourself.
The solution is affordable, highly effective, and cheap-to-run cooling that’s easy to fit and works brilliantly. It’s also the only cooling method that does it all, and it’s called evaporative cooling.
How much does evaporative cooling cost?
Here’s an example of the cost of
evaporative cooling, the best alternative to traditional air conditioning.