Across the Gulf, energy-thirsty air-conditioning units chug along throughout the day.

It is estimated they'll be switched on in homes at least 250 days a year – and in most offices and malls, they'll run every single day.

They make life in the world's hottest region bearable and are essential for the economy to function.

But the need to stay cool requires the use of ever-increasing amounts of power, with climate change and extreme weather putting sources of energy under greater scrutiny.

The need to cut the financial and environmental costs is coming into sharp focus.

AC power consumption increased five-fold in the Middle East between 1990 and 2016, World Bank figures show. With much of the electricity in the region generated by burning fossil fuels, the need to keep people cool contributes to the warming of the planet.

"Electricity consumption in the GCC is among the highest in the world," said Prof Moncef Krarti, of the civil, environmental and architectural department at the University of Boulder, Colorado.

As Daniel Bardsley writes this week, the need to retrofit buildings and scrap old AC units, at the very least, is essential.

Countries such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have minimum standards for AC units in new homes, but existing devices may be much less efficient. Saudi Arabia alone has 18 million old window AC units, now seen as the least efficient device on the market.

A current, non-ducted unit (a type of AC unit normally used to cool individual rooms) consumed 54 per cent less power than a 2011 model under the same test conditions.

Energy subsidies – a topic under the spotlight on the opening day of Cop28 last year – also lead to overuse of air conditioning.

"Some GCC countries have electricity costs of less than one cent per kilowatt hour, like in Kuwait, which makes any energy efficiency measure not very cost effective," Prof Krarti said.

This week's in-depth look at the issue – and the way forward – is here.

'New normal' of extreme weather will require massive investment

Staying with extreme weather, and an Oxford Analytica report warns that Gulf states will be required to invest billions of dollars in flood-proofing infrastructure, as the region grapples with the “new normal” of extreme weather.

A major lack of drainage, early warning systems and upgrades to the health sector will be needed, it said.

As we reported recently, the climate in the UAE and Oman is changing from subtropical to tropical.

“A tropical climate is known for extreme rainfall events in spring and summer,” said Dr Diana Francis, an assistant professor who heads the Environmental and Geophysical Sciences (Engeos) Lab at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi.

Solutions could be found in nature, in addition to infrastructure and technology.

The Oxford report urged decision-makers to look to nature to protect against adverse weather, including the building of canals to help contain flooding.

You can read more here.

‘Miracle’ breakthrough in cement recycling could slash emissions

A method which could revolutionise the production of concrete and slash emissions in the global building industry has been developed.

Concrete is the world’s most-used material, with 500kg produced for every person on the planet a year.

But it is also hugely energy intensive and responsible for about 7.5 per cent of the world's emissions - more than aviation and shipping combined.

The process was discovered by the University of Cambridge and used electrically powered arc furnaces for steel recycling to simultaneously recycle cement, the carbon-hungry component of concrete, which is responsible for almost 90 per cent of its emissions.

The researchers behind the discovery describe it as “an absolute miracle”.

Prof Julian Allwood from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who led the research, told The National: “Cement is the active ingredient and the one that’s associated with all the emissions.”

Gillian Duncan's full story is here.

The big fact

Least-developed countries are often especially vulnerable to climate change – but they received only 1.5 per cent of all the world's investment in clean energy between 2015 and 2022. That's according to the Solar Electric Light Fund.

Jargon buster

Attribution: This is how scientists figure out whether a natural disaster, say a flood, was linked to global warming.

The way they do this is to work out how likely that flood would have been in an imaginary world that is not warming. If the answer is "very unlikely" that suggests it was caused by climate change.

Our full guide to understanding climate jargon is here.

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