At higher lattitudes and elevations, it often gets too cold; and remediating that takes more energy than A/C.
Perhaps we could simply build double the housing and infrastructure we currently have, and move whole populations north/up and south/down seasonally, to save energy?
Energy is dirt-cheap in the long run (at least at midday), it's energy storage that will be hard. And it just so happens that storing heat is easier than storing cold.
Cold requires an air conditioner instead of just resistive heating, and you can't go down more than 300ish degrees, and realistically you're not using liquid nitrogen let alone liquid helium. Meanwhile, generating heat with resistive heating is literally just the cost of wires.
High latitudes are ideal here, as you lose temperature without losing sunlight. Wind speeds are generally higher too.
Meanwhile, generating heat with resistive heating is literally just the cost of wires.
And the electric current you need to run through them. Resistive heating has a COP of 1.0 by definition. A modern, cold climate, air source heat pump can achieve a COP of 4.0 or higher at temperatures down to -15C (5F). This means 1/4 the winter heating bill for heat pumps over resistive electric.
Where I live (Canada) the winter heating bills are far higher than the summer cooling bills, despite our humid summers with heat waves reaching 30C+ (86F) for weeks at a time.
I think it's also worth noting that people can survive in a colder temperature range with warm clothes and insulation much more easily than hot temperature ranges
Hot environments start becoming potentially lethal at around 40 degrees Celsius
Cold environments are easily survived with decent clothes and coverings down to -40C, and can go much colder with specialized layers and personal warming
If energy production--including its externalities--is too cheap to meter, all this is moot. However, if you're worried about time-shifting renewables, please note that it tends to get hot when the sun is shining. You can observe this in Florida (I kept my house at 73 cheaply with my solar panels), and California, where the duck curve has gone negative.
To be fair I live in the Alps basically and it's not colder on average than the city areas below. In fact we do have a lot more sun hours.
I live were the warm winds from the south hit the Alps. It's arguable warmer and nicer here on average than in most of central Europe. But it never gets as hot as in city areas or even worse areas where people run many ACs
Perhaps we could simply build double the housing and infrastructure we currently have, and move whole populations north/up and south/down seasonally, to save energy?