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I had no idea about it when I bought a portable air conditioner. What’s most shocking is that there is an easy fix – and I think the law needs to be changed so that no portable air conditioners can be sold without it.

First, let’s deal with the idea, especially common in the UK, that it is somehow wrong to buy an air conditioner. If you don’t need it where you are, great. But lots of us live in homes that get too hot during heatwaves, even when you do all the right things, like shutting blinds and windows during the day. And being too hot is bad for our health – sometimes, it is even deadly. It also makes it hard to work or do schoolwork. If it is OK to use energy to heat homes, I think it is also OK to use energy to stay cool – what’s the difference?

The fact is that, as the world heats up, more and more of us will resort to air conditioning to stay cool. Reducing the energy used by all these extra air conditioners is really important to minimise extra carbon emissions that result in even more warming – and even more need for air conditioners.

To understand the design flaw, you need to know how air conditioners work. The most efficient ones have a split system. There’s an outside unit, where a refrigerant is compressed to make it liquid, heating it up. It is then cooled by a heat exchanger over which outside air is blown.

The refrigerant then goes through a narrow pipe to the inside unit, where it is turned into a gas, cooling it down. That goes through another heat exchanger over which the room air is blown, cooling that air by transferring its heat to the refrigerant.

So the room air stays in the room, and only the heat is taken out. There is also less noise with split systems, because the compressor is outside. But they are almost all expensive, built-in systems – very few portable split systems are available, in part because, for upstairs rooms, there is usually nowhere to put the outside unit.

Instead of an outside unit, some portable air conditioners bring air from outside into the room. There is a wide air intake hose that sucks in outside air, and the heated air is blown out of a similar hose.

Dual-hose air conditioners, as they are known, are less efficient than split systems. The outlet hose transfers some heat to the room – you can reduce this by wrapping a blanket around it – and if the hose ends are too close, heated air can get sucked into the intake. But as with split systems, room air stays in the room.

With single-hose portable air conditioners, however, there’s no air intake hose. Instead, room air is used to cool the hot refrigerant and then blown out of the single hose, which means hot outside air is continuously sucked into the room.

If there’s a window open, hot air will come in through that. With the windows closed, the hot air will come via other parts of your home, warming them along the way. Either way, the air conditioner is constantly having to cool hot outside air, and so it has to use much more energy. It’s like adding mud to laundry detergent.

What’s more, the efficiency of single-hose air conditioners falls rapidly as it gets hotter outside. They will fail to keep a room cool much sooner than a similarly powered dual-hose one.

This is a huge design flaw, but in Europe, none of the labels tells you this. The specifications for an air conditioner state its cooling capacity in British thermal units, but this is simply a measure of heat transfer within a machine. It doesn’t take into account the fact that more heat has to be transferred if hot air is continuously sucked into a room.

The same is true of the seasonal energy efficiency ratio, or SEER, numbers you might find. These are just the cooling capacity divided by the electricity consumed. By these measures, dual-hose air conditioners appear no better than single-hose ones that are easier to set up.

“Consumers find dealing with the two ducts difficult and often don’t have the space to vent two ducts out of the room,” says Chris Michael at the cooling company Meaco. So it isn’t surprising that people choose single-hose units and that dual-hose ones are very hard to find in the UK.

The US is doing better on the labelling front. It has introduced two measures that take into account hot air sucked into a room and heat coming off the air outlet hose. There’s the seasonally adjusted cooling capacity, or SACC, which is much lower than the unadjusted capacity number, typically by a third or more.

Even more important is the combined energy efficiency ratio, or CEER. It’s here that you start to see how much more efficient dual-hose air conditioners are.

But in my view, these numbers still don’t give buyers the full picture. Both the SACC and CEER measurements assume the outdoor temperature is 28°C (82.4°F) for 80 per cent of the time an air conditioner is running, and 35°C (95°F) for 20 per cent. I don’t need air conditioning at 28°C – it’s how an air conditioner performs when the thermometer hits 40°C (104°F) that’s most important to me.

Now here’s the most ridiculous thing. Most single-hose air conditioners are essentially dual-hose units that come with only one hose. All you need to fix this flaw is another hose and an attachment. At least one manufacturer, GE, sells a conversion kit for some of its single-hose models – and advertises it as increasing cooling power by three times. Three times!

Lots of people make DIY conversions, ranging from tape-and-cardboard affairs to 3D-printed parts, and every account I have read says it makes a big difference. That was my experience when I tried a crude conversion during the May heatwave in the UK, with the whole house feeling much cooler.

So, in my view, at the very least, the labelling of portable air conditioners needs to be changed in the UK and the European Union to reflect their real-world performance during the hottest heatwaves. It is bizarre and misleading that single-hose air conditioners can have “A” ratings for efficiency.

Better still would be a complete ban on the sale of single-hose air conditioners. All portable units should be sold as dual-hose, with the option to use them as single-hose when people really cannot have a dual-hose setup. Put another way, no single-hose air conditioner should be sold without a conversion kit. Michael says Meaco is considering introducing such a machine in 2027.

I tried to find out who in the UK is responsible for regulating portable air conditioners, and hit a blank. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did the Energy Saving Trust get back to me. But hopefully the right person might end up reading this. There’s an easy climate win to be achieved here. %!s()

Homeowners tapped an estimated $47 billion in equity — the difference between their mortgage balance and the property's market value — during the first three months of 2026, according to a new report from Intercontinental Exchange, a financial markets technology and data company. While down from $49 billion in the final quarter of 2025, the figure marks the highest first-quarter withdrawal figure since 2021.

Home equity lines of credit, or HELOCs, and home equity loans accounted for 54% of withdrawals in the quarter, and the remainder came from cash-out mortgage refinancing, the report shows. Nearly two-thirds of those second-lien borrowers have mortgages that were originated between 2020 and 2022, when average rates were in the 3% to 4% range.

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"The housing market continues to be defined by the lock-in effect," said Andy Walden, head of mortgage and housing market research at ICE, in the report.

"Millions of homeowners are sitting on first mortgages with rates well below current market levels, making second liens and HELOCs an attractive way to access equity without giving up those loans," Walden said.

Homeowners are sitting on $11 trillion in equity

Rates on a standard 30-year fixed-rate mortgage currently are trending above 6.5%, according to Mortgage News Daily. After the low rates offered from 2020 through most of 2022, rates brushed 8% in October 2023 before trending downward.

The median price of an existing home in the U.S. was $429,300 in May, up 1.3% from $423,700 a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. However, that figure is about 50.8% above the May 2020 median price of $284,600.

The upshot is that there's an estimated $11 trillion in home equity available to borrowers, according to ICE. And, experts say, accessing it for extra cash can be tempting.

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However, "home equity is not free money," said certified financial planner Joon Um, a tax advisor with Secure Tax & Accounting in Beverly Hills, California.

"With borrowing costs still relatively high, homeowners should make sure the purpose of the loan is strong enough to justify the cost," Um said.

In other words, the reason for tapping the equity should make sense from a financial standpoint, experts said.

With borrowing costs still relatively high, homeowners should make sure the purpose of the loan is strong enough to justify the cost.

Joon Um

Tax advisor with Secure Tax & Accounting

For example, if the funds are used for repairs or upgrades, "then the money is being spent on capital improvements for your home, which might make sense," said CFP George Gagliardi, founder and financial advisor with Coromandel Wealth Strategies in Lexington, Massachusetts.

"If it is for vacations or other discretionary expenses, ask yourself if you are now living beyond your means in terms of your income," Gagliardi said. "You might end up paying many years of interest on that summer vacation."

Refinancing or getting a second loan

If you do consider tapping your equity, it's worth knowing the differences in the options available. 

A cash-out refinance generally involves refinancing your mortgage and taking out some equity as cash as part of the new loan. 

This route involves going through the entire mortgage approval process, as well as paying closing costs — which include things like fees, taxes and title insurance — and typically run 2% to 5% of the new loan, according to Zillow. Lenders may let you roll those costs into the new mortgage, which would mean spreading them out over the life of the loan and paying interest.

However, "a cash-out refinance may be difficult to justify if it means giving up an existing mortgage with a much lower rate," Um said.

In the first quarter, nearly half of cash-out refis came from borrowers refinancing mortgages originated in 2023 or later, according to the ICE report. Another quarter came from borrowers giving up the low rates they secured between 2020 and 2022 in order to withdraw equity.

Meanwhile, some homeowners choose to keep their first mortgage and instead get a home equity loan, which generally comes with a fixed interest rate and fixed payment amount. The average rate on a five-year home equity loan is 8.12% as of June 3, according to Bankrate. For a 15-year loan, the average is 8.2%. Generally, the longer the loan, the higher the interest rate.

These loans also come with closing costs, although they may be lower than those associated with a first mortgage, according to Bankrate.

What to be aware of with HELOCs

Meanwhile, HELOCs let you tap a line of credit over time as you need the money instead of getting it all at once, as you would with a home equity loan.

While HELOCs may have fewer upfront costs than a home equity loan, they generally come with an interest rate that is variable, so it will move up and down based on a benchmark like the prime rate, which banks use as a basis to set rates on a variety of loans. And, while the Federal Reserve doesn't control that rate, it is influenced by changes the Fed makes to the so-called federal funds rate.

The average interest rate for a $30,000 HELOC is 7.43% as of June 3, according to Bankrate.

Many HELOCs also have a "draw" period when you can take money out, which often lasts five or 10 years. During that time, you typically are only required to pay the interest on any funds you've withdrawn. After that, however, you'll enter a repayment period of, say, 10 or 20 years, when you're required to pay both interest and principal. Because of that, your payments will jump if you've only been paying interest.

"Make sure the payments fit comfortably in your budget, and remember that your home is the collateral," Um said. %!s()

Uranus appears to have far more water frozen as ice in its interior than astronomers thought, potentially settling a long-running mystery about whether it formed differently to its closest neighbour, Neptune.

Ice giants like Uranus and Neptune have thick, gassy atmospheres. This makes it hard to know what is inside the planets’ interiors or how they formed. Scientists can, however, measure gases in their atmospheres, which they can then link to processes and elements deeper inside.

Carbon monoxide in a planet’s atmosphere is often associated with its deepest parts being rich in water or ice, but while neighbouring Neptune has displayed abundant carbon monoxide suggestive of an ice-rich centre, Uranus has been lacking, which has led some astronomers to argue it instead has a rocky interior. If true, this would mean that Neptune and Uranus formed in very different ways and aren’t as similar as they appear.

Now, Thibault Cavalié at the University of Bordeaux in France and his colleagues have found carbon monoxide in Uranus’s lower atmosphere for the first time, suggesting it is far richer in water than previously suspected.

“We find that Uranus is more on the ice-giant side than on the rock-giant side,” says Cavalié. “It tells us that this controversy is over now. We have to be careful when we say things like that, because things also depend on modelling, but that’s the feeling we have.”

Cavalié and his colleagues used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array telescope in Chile to observe Uranus three times between 2022 and 2024 and detected significant amounts of carbon monoxide in the planet’s lower atmosphere. They then used several models with different ratios of rock and ice to try to reproduce the amount of carbon monoxide they measured, finding that they could only reproduce it with the ice-rich models.

They also detected carbon monoxide in Uranus’s upper atmosphere, but this suggests it is from a different source than from inside Uranus, probably from a comet striking the planet several centuries ago, says Cavalié.

Finding carbon monoxide is an important step in understanding Uranus’s deep interior, but it isn’t clear where it might be coming from, says Vanesa Ramirez at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “Interpreting atmospheric abundances requires assumptions about chemistry, mixing and internal structure, all of which remain uncertain for Uranus.”

These assumptions and the wide range of models used to simulate Uranus’s interior means there are many different rock-to-ice ratios that are compatible with the available data, says Ramirez. “On its own, it does not settle the question of whether Uranus should be regarded primarily as an ice-rich or rock-rich giant.”

Topics: Solar system %!s()

Researchers initially suspected that a supermassive black hole was powering an extraordinarily bright distant galaxy linked to the neutrino signal. Instead, observations revealed that the galaxy's energy comes from intense star formation. The finding provides important evidence that could help explain where many of the Universe's mysterious high-energy neutrinos originate.

Tracking One of the Universe's Most Elusive Particles

Neutrinos are among the most puzzling particles known to science. Vast numbers of them pass through space, and even through Earth, with very little interaction with matter. Although astronomers have identified a handful of galaxies capable of producing neutrinos, those known sources are not enough to account for the large population of high-energy neutrinos detected so far.

To investigate the origin of one such particle, an international team of researchers from MITOS Science Co., LTD., National Central University, Chung Yuan Christian University, Tohoku University, Fukui University of Technology, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan conducted follow-up observations using ALMA and several other telescopes.

Their target was the high-energy neutrino event IC 210922A, which was detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. The search led them to an exceptionally luminous galaxy known as JCMT0402−0424, located roughly 11 billion light-years from Earth.

The Mystery of Shadow Blaster

The galaxy is heavily veiled by dust, making it difficult to see in visible light. At submillimeter wavelengths, however, it shines intensely. Because of its hidden nature and extreme brightness at those wavelengths, the team gave it the nickname 'Shadow Blaster.'

A Natural Telescope Reveals the Galaxy's Core

Astronomers were able to look deep inside Shadow Blaster thanks to a fortunate alignment with another galaxy positioned between it and Earth. The foreground galaxy's gravity bent and amplified radio waves coming from Shadow Blaster, effectively creating a natural telescope.

This gravitational lensing effect produced brighter and enlarged images that allowed ALMA to examine the distant galaxy in far greater detail.

The radio observations again showed no sign of a powerful black hole. Instead, the data pointed toward another source of energy. The gas and dust throughout the galaxy appear to be heated primarily by vigorous star formation.

Researchers also identified a dense "compact core" at the center of Shadow Blaster. Large quantities of gas and dust are packed into a region only about 1,500 light-years across. Such an extreme environment is capable of generating neutrinos.

A New Explanation for High-Energy Neutrinos

The results suggest that intense star-forming galaxies may represent an important and previously underappreciated source of high-energy neutrinos.

According to the team, compact, dust-rich starburst galaxies undergoing rapid star formation could contribute a substantial share of the high-energy neutrino background. Their analysis indicates that these galaxies may account for as much as 20% of the total population of high-energy neutrinos observed across the Universe.

If confirmed by future studies, the discovery could significantly reshape scientists' understanding of how some of the Universe's most elusive particles are produced. %!s()

Both solutions run on the same foundation. But the scope, customization, and automation capabilities are built for different needs.

Semrush vs Semrush for Enterprise: In a nutshell

The main difference is depth and scale. Semrush gives teams an accessible way to manage and grow their search visibility — from Google to LLMs like ChatGPT — and provides powerful tools for competitive intelligence, market research, and more. Semrush for Enterprise builds on that with deeper segmentation, advanced automation, and governance controls.

What Semrush and Semrush for Enterprise have in common

Both Semrush and the Enterprise platform help teams track and grow visibility across traditional search and AI platforms from a single place.

With both platforms, you can:

• Track visibility across Google AI and AI platforms like ChatGPT (although Enterprise gives you access to more LLMs)
• Monitor rankings, brand mentions, AI citations, and competitor visibility
• Analyze SEO and AI visibility together across keywords, prompts, citations, etc.
• Access Semrush's core search and AI visibility datasets, including 27.9B keywords across 142 geo databases and 261M+ real AI search prompts
• Identify opportunities to improve how your brand appears in both search engines and AI-generated answers

Semrush: for teams that need simplicity, clarity, and speed

Semrush combines SEO and AI visibility to help teams grow their organic brand visibility. It also offers tools for content creation, market research, advertising campaigns, and more. Teams can get started immediately with self-serve access to the platform, without needing to go through a sales process.

Who it's for

Semrush works best for practitioners who need to track SEO and AI visibility in one place, monitor competitor changes, and get recommended actions to improve their results.

The ease of entry makes it an ideal toolkit for solo marketers, consultants, and teams working with SMBs and mid-market companies. The interface is also easy to navigate, even if you're not an SEO expert.

And if you want to dig deeper, you can access more advanced insights – e.g., the data on AI brand positioning, keyword cluster strategy suggestions, etc.

What Semrush does well

• Beginner-friendly, self-serve setup: Anyone can jump in and start getting value from day one, even as a solo marketer or small team.
• Everything you need to grow your online presence: You get a full set of tools covering SEO, AI visibility, content marketing, advertising research, and competitive intelligence. It lets you identify competitor gaps, source concrete ideas, generate professional monthly reports, and more.
• Fast time-to-insight: The platform highlights what to act on and provides recommendations stemming from Semrush's powerful data, packaged into opportunities you can act on.
• Deep insights on AI brand perceptions: You learn how AI describes your brand, explore AI sentiment, framing, and the competitive context AI associates with you.
• Affordability and flexible pricing: Plans start at $139/month, and every plan includes access to 5 LLMs without paying separately for each AI platform.

Pricing

Semrush plans start at $139/month. Other toolkits — like Traffic & Market — are available for an additional fee.

For combined SEO and AI visibility, Semrush One pricing starts at $199/month ($165/month on the annual plan) and includes both SEO and AI visibility tools, with all major LLMs included. The most advanced plan costs $549/month and includes features for larger teams and agencies, including expanded API data access and tracking for up to 40 websites daily.

Semrush for Enterprise: for organizations that need scale, automation, and control

Semrush for Enterprise offers a set of tools, dashboards, and automation workflows for larger teams looking to control their brand narratives and grow search visibility.

Who it’s for

Semrush for Enterprise is the right choice if your organization operates across multiple brands, product lines, markets, or regions. It works especially well for tying visibility data to ROI, implementing governance across distributed teams, and executive-ready reporting.

This makes the platform especially valuable for companies with 1,000+ employees, large agencies, and global organizations where a central team sets the direction, and multiple contributors bring it to life.

What the Enterprise platform unlocks

• Multi-workspace governance: The platform provides central control with role-based access across teams and regions.

• No hard limits on scale: It supports massive data volumes, comprehensive crawls of large enterprise websites with millions of pages. You can also customize and segment your data to see the right picture for every brand, product line, and location.

• Forecasting and scenario modeling: You can plan and defend decisions at a leadership level and support your ideas with real data.

• Executive dashboards with ROI analysis: Automated reporting that connects visibility to revenue is essential for large-scale, high-budget projects.

• Personalized services: Expert-led onboarding and consulting turn Enterprise capabilities into measurable results and help navigate the complexity when there are multiple users and stakeholders involved.

• ​​Automation at scale: Bulk audits, content generation, forecasting, and automated SEO and AI visibility workflows, with executive dashboards that update in real time.

Pricing

Book a demo and get a custom quote based on your scope and needs.

Semrush vs Semrush for Enterprise: Side-by-side comparison

How to choose between Semrush and Semrush for Enterprise

To choose between Semrush and the Enterprise platform, answer these four questions:

1. How big is your team, and how many markets or brands do you operate in? Semrush covers the needs of solo marketers and small teams focused on one brand in one market. The Enterprise Platform serves teams managing visibility across multiple brands, regions, or business units with distributed local execution.

2. Do you need governance and role-based access across teams? Semrush supports one user by default and offers user add-ons at $45 - $100 per user, depending on the plan. The Enterprise Platform includes 40+ users, role-based permissions, multi-workspace controls, and unlimited guest users. Large distributed teams that need to collaborate without conflict will benefit from using the Enterprise Platform.

3. Are you reporting visibility metrics to executives and connecting them to revenue? Semrush serves practitioners reporting on rankings, visibility scores, and content opportunities. The Enterprise Platform equips CMOs and VPs leading large teams to connect organic visibility directly to pipeline and revenue conversations.

4. What's your budget model — self-serve subscription or a custom enterprise contract? Semrush offers transparent, predictable pricing with no sales conversation required. The Enterprise Platform delivers custom, contract-based pricing structured around the individual needs of each brand.

If you need to build a complex strategy for a multinational brand and have substantial resources allocated to your goals, Enterprise is the better fit. If you need to start growing your visibility today and your budget is limited, Semrush is a better choice.

FAQs

What's the difference between Semrush and Semrush for Enterprise? 

Semrush is a brand visibility platform built for smaller teams, covering SEO, AI visibility, content, advertising, competitive research, and more in a self-serve setup. Semrush for Enterprise adds advanced automation, customization, governance controls, forecasting, and executive reporting for large organizations operating across multiple brands, markets, and teams.

How much does Semrush cost? 

Semrush plans start at $139/month. For combined SEO and AI visibility, Semrush One offers three plans:

• Starter: $199/month
• Pro+: $299/month
• Advanced: $549/month

Each plan includes different tracking limits and website allowances. Additional users are available as separate add-ons.

How much does Semrush for Enterprise cost? 

Semrush for Enterprise uses custom pricing based on your organization's size, workflows, reporting needs, and data requirements.

Does Semrush include AI visibility tracking? 

Yes. Semrush includes AI visibility tracking across major AI platforms and search experiences, including ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Perplexity.

Can I upgrade from Semrush to Enterprise later? 

Yes. Many teams start with Semrush and move to Enterprise as their reporting, automation, and collaboration needs evolve. %!s()