Photo by Tony DeFilippo

Air conditioning is a necessity in D.C., especially at the height of the summer. But the use of A/C units can be extremely wasteful, especially when doors and windows are left open. Now the D.C. Council wants to do something about it.

According to the Washington Business Journal, today the council will vote on legislation that would impose fines on businesses that run the A/C while keeping their doors open. Introduced by Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), the bill would apply to some 4,000 buildings in D.C. and subject them to a $100 fine for a first offense, $200 for a second, $400 for a third, and $800 for a fourth offense. Restaurants, non-chain retailers that occupy less than 4,000 square feet and hotels would be exempted.

So, just how much energy is wasted when a door is left open? Reports WBJ:

During a July 2 public hearing on the bill, Christophe Tulou, the now former chief of the Department of the Environment, cited a Consolidated Edison Inc. study that found one 10,000-square-foot business that keeps its doors open for eight hours a day, five days a week wastes 4,200 kilowatt hours of electricity and pays an additional $1,000 on its electric bill. Multiply that one business by 1,000, he said, and the waste skyrockets.

A similar proposal was floated in New York as far back as 2008, and Cheh’s bill would probably make Pepco very, very happy—our local utility regularly asks customers to go easy on energy-sucking appliances during the summer months, when energy use is highest.

In August the New York Times published an interesting piece on air conditioning, in which an environmental reporter wrote that A/C use is becoming more widespread across the world, much to the detriment of the environment and electric grids. Of course, she added, research has found that we’re productive in lower temperatures, so it’s a Catch-22: to be better at what we do in a warming world, we use a means that keeps us cool while contributing to further global warming.