How to cool down your home without air conditioning Beat the heat without wrecking your power bill. Albert Bassili FacebookTwitterEmail As record heat waves sweep the country, a lot of folks are scrambling to figure out how to stay cool. Usually that means turning up (or installing) an air conditioner, but not only is that expensive, it’s not exactly environmentally friendly. How are ACs? Start with the gasses most older units need to run: chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). These two refrigerants contribute to massive amounts of environmental damage, mostly in the form of ozone depletion and climate change. So any time either of these two leak into the environment (which they do, because no system is 100% airtight), they are doing some pretty big damage.