America’s most air-conditioned states

The U.S. Census Bureau has a new way to understand where households across the country do and don’t have air conditioning. 

What’s happening: The agency in late May launched the 2023 Local Air Conditioning Estimates (LACE), an “experimental data product” that combines existing federal datasets to estimate the share of homes with air conditioning by state and county.

• At the state level, it found that Florida, Oklahoma, and Delaware tied for the highest percentage of air-conditioned homes, at 99.5 percent, followed by Alabama (99.2 percent) to round out the top four. 
• Meanwhile, Alaska sits at the other end at just seven percent, followed by Hawaii (56.6 percent), Washington State (65.8 percent), and Vermont (72.8 percent).

What they’re saying: “Using cross survey modeling, [LACE] produced estimates for smaller areas than [existing methods] alone can typically measure,” the Census Bureau wrote in a news release.