Follow the money: Europe’s air-con economy

**Sam Fenwick** (0:04)
A discount supermarket in Paris one morning in July.
The doors haven't opened yet. The queue goes around the building. They weren't there for fresh French bread.
They were there for a box with a fan in it, and within minutes the shelves are empty. It's already hot, and as the morning went on, the mood in the queue turned. There were fights. The footage went viral.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:30)
Witnesses say as soon as the store in Paris opened up, a mini riot broke out as people scrambled for the ACs. Supplies of air conditioners have dwindled amid the heat wave in France, and the bad news, more hot weather is expected this weekend.

**Sam Fenwick** (0:45)
I was really surprised by this footage. There were people shoving each other in the supermarket aisle for an aircon unit.
I've seen sale queues. I've even been in them. But I've never seen anything quite like this.

**Sam Fenwick** (0:59)
I'm Sam Fenwick.

**Sam Fenwick** (1:00)
This is Business Daily from the BBC World Service. Today we're following the money behind Europe's air conditioning boom. You paid to stay cool this summer, so where did the money actually go?
Only about a fifth of European homes have air conditioning at all. In Northern Europe, it's more like one in 10, or even fewer. And yet research published in the journal Nature Medicine estimated that heat killed more than 60,000 people across Europe in 2024 This summer, France alone has had four heat waves since May. So a lot of people went out and bought air conditioners. And behind every one of those machines is a chain. Four links. The factory in southern China that makes the unit, the shop that runs out of them, the power station that provides the energy when you switch them on, and the street outside your window, which gets hotter while you, thanks to the air con, get cooler. We're going to follow the money through all four and find out who's making money off Europe's summer heat wave.
So let's start with the box itself. Most of Europe's air conditioning units are made in China, and one company is way out in front, even if you've probably never heard of them. Innovative technologies.

**Gideon Long** (2:18)
Medea air conditioners.

**Sam Fenwick** (2:21)
Medea is one of China's biggest manufacturers of home appliances. And Tobias Strobl is head of innovation for Europe, responsible for air conditioning units, heat pumps and battery systems. He's speaking to us from the company's European Research Centre in Stuttgart, Germany.

**Tobias Strobl** (2:38)
We have 190,000 employees, so really, really big. But in Germany, nobody knows it. From employees' point of view, we are the same size like Mercedes, but nobody knows.

**Sam Fenwick** (2:48)
For years, most Europeans wouldn't bother buying an air conditioning unit. You know, the kind, the box bolted to the outside of the wall, the unit on the wall inside and a pipe running between them. An engineer, a ladder and a drill. And that was partly because of the cost.

**Tobias Strobl** (3:03)
In Germany, especially, the installation cost is 60% of the unit. At the end, it costs 3,000 euros, a single split AC and just 1,000 euro for the unit itself. So the installation cost is really, really high in Central Europe. And in Germany, it's really, really strict. So even if you own an apartment, you cannot put something on the façade. You have to ask your neighbour on the left or on the bottom, on the top, on the right. And one of them will definitely say, no, I don't want it. And then it's done, then you cannot install it.

**Sam Fenwick** (3:32)
So it's not cheap, about 3,000 euros or 3,500 US dollars all in. So Tobias and his team came up with something else, a unit that splits in two and hooks over a window ledge.
No drilling, no builder, no asking the neighbours. Around 1,000 dollars instead of 3,500. Then it went on sale and then this summer happened.

**Sam Fenwick** (3:53)
But even now, when we went to the shop, there's like no water in the shops, it's all like really hot.

**Gideon Long** (3:58)
The local paper, Nismatang, saying heat is coming for us.

**SPEAKER_6** (4:02)
El Nino is not just knocking on the door, it risks blowing the house down.

**Sam Fenwick** (4:07)
Everybody wants air con. You can see it in the trade data. According to Chinese customs figures, air conditioner exports to the European Union hit nearly $3.8 billion in the first half of this year. That's up more than 40% on last year.
Medea and companies like it sold out of portable air con units quickly. And they're still struggling to keep up with demand, despite having doubled their production capacity this year compared with last.