AIR CONDITIONING Retrofi tting resilience
Following the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) recent report calling for greater investment in cooling for schools, hospitals and care homes, Steve Molloy, Sustainability & Commercial Solutions Manager at Daikin, considers what a retrofi t programme for the public estate would need to look like.
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"Additional cooling capacity, particularly where it is delivered through heat pump technology, will increase electrical demand at both building and site level."
For many years, the infamous summer of 1976 was the hot weather benchmark that all other heatwaves were measured against. Yet, by the middle of July this year, the
UK had recorded more days above 30°C than in the whole of 1976, with three separate heatwaves placing signifi cant stress on hospitals, ambulance services and schools struggling to deal with the rising temperatures. Provisional analysis suggests the May and June heat episodes alone may have contributed to more than 2,700 excess deaths in England and Wales. For a country whose building stock was largely specifi ed for a cooler and more stable climate, the gap between design assumptions and operational reality is increasing quickly.
This statistic is all the more poignant, given that it comes
following the publication in May of the Climate Change Committee’s latest UK climate risk assessment, which set out the adaptation measures it believes are needed to keep the country functioning as temperatures rise. Among its recommendations, the report calls on the Government to invest in cooling for critical public infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, prisons and care homes, and to consider regulation and standards to drive uptake where passive measures alone will not be suffi cient. It also proposes a maximum temperature threshold for workplaces, which would in turn incentivise the deployment of cooling capacity across the public and commercial estate. For those working in HVAC design and delivery, this echoes a commonly held sentiment that while passive measures such as shading, ventilation and solar control are clearly crucial, they will not be enough to mitigate the eff ects of climate change on their own, particularly for existing buildings and those housing the very young, the elderly or the unwell. Active cooling strategies are therefore becoming an increasingly crucial consideration for both new build and retrofi t projects.
The retrofi t challenge While the CCC’s recommendations are welcome, retrofi tting the public estate at the scale implied by its analysis is a huge undertaking and signifi cantly more complex than simply installing more cooling plant. Many schools and hospitals were built decades ago, in some cases under very diff erent regulatory and budgetary conditions, and their fabric performance varies enormously. Poorly insulated envelopes, extensive single- glazing, limited shading and restricted ventilation paths all increase the cooling load that any mechanical system will need to overcome.
18 September 2026 •
www.acr-news.com
A fabric-fi rst approach therefore remains the right starting point for retrofi t programmes, just as it is for new build. Improving insulation, addressing solar gain through glazing upgrades or external shading, and ensuring ventilation paths are unobstructed will reduce the size and running cost of whatever mechanical solution follows. Where fabric improvements are constrained by budget, listed status or programme timescales, the mechanical strategy will need to work harder to compensate, and system selection becomes correspondingly more important.
Sequencing and prioritisation will matter as much as
specifi cation. With thousands of schools, hospitals and care settings potentially in scope, a phased programme that targets the most vulnerable occupants and the highest-risk buildings fi rst, based on factors such as occupant age, ward type, orientation and existing fabric condition, is likely to deliver better outcomes than an even spread of investment across the estate. Understanding the condition and remaining service life of existing plant is a useful early step in this process, allowing facilities teams to plan proactive replacement around a wider retrofi t programme rather than reacting to failures during a heatwave.
Electrical infrastructure also needs early consideration. Additional cooling capacity, particularly where it is delivered through heat pump technology, will increase electrical demand at both building and site level. Engaging with the Distribution Network Operator early in the design process, alongside an honest assessment of available capacity, will help avoid abortive design work later in the programme.
Why air-to-air heat pumps fi t For many public buildings, Variable Refrigerant Volume (VRV) air- to-air heat pump systems off er a practical and effi cient route to delivering an active cooling strategy. Because a single reversible system can provide both heating and cooling, a school or care home gains year-round thermal comfort from one piece of plant rather than maintaining separate heating and cooling systems, which is a meaningful advantage where existing plant rooms and service risers off er limited additional space. The compact refrigerant pipework typical of VRV systems is also well suited to occupied buildings, where disruption to teaching, patient care or daily operations needs to be minimised during installation. Multi-split confi gurations allow individual classrooms, wards or offi ces to be conditioned according to their own occupancy and solar exposure, rather than treating a
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