Europe was the ‘most unusually hot place on the planet’ this summer. Can renewables cool us down?

“These past three months are a warning sign we cannot afford to ignore – the human and economic costs of fossil fuels are playing out in real time.” More than 1.5 billion people faced dangerous levels of heat this summer globally, new analysis shows. A report by nonprofit Climate Central found that nearly nine in 10 Europeans experienced a month’s worth of “risky heat” during the June-August 2026 period, making it the most “unusually hot place on the planet”. Researchers defined “risky heat” as days that were hotter than 90 per cent of what a local area experienced between 1991 and 2020 for this time of the year, representing the point at which health risks from extreme heat begins to rise. The study also found that 203 countries saw the average person face at least 30 days of risky heat, with 54 experiencing their hottest June-August on record. Of the top 10 unusually hottest countries, seven were in Europe. This was led by France, which recorded the highest temperature anomalies of any country in the world (3.5C above the historical norm). ‘A warning sign we cannot afford to ignore’ “Whether it’s nine in 10 Europeans enduring risky heat, hundreds of millions impacted across Asia and Africa, or relentless record-breaking temperatures in North America, human-driven warming is pushing communities beyond safe physical limits,” says Kristina Dahl at Climate Central. “These past three months are a warning sign we cannot afford to ignore – the human and economic costs of fossil fuels are playing out in real time, and the urgency to shift away from them has never been clearer.” Simon Steill, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), who was not involved in the study, said the research highlights the “spiralling costs of the climate crisis caused by humanity’s addiction to burning coal, oil and gas.” He adds that the solution is “clear”, calling for a fast transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, which are “cheaper and safer”. Can clean energy cool down Europe? Europe’s scorching summer, which scientists say would have been “virtually impossible” if it weren’t for climate change, was part of a much broader trend. Earlier this month, the UN warned that it is no longer possible to keep global warming below 1.5°C. This is the legally binding threshold that was agreed by almost 200 nations in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report projects a best-case 1.8°C of warming and over 2°C in other scenarios. “Overshoot, peak and decline” is now our best bet, it adds. The transition to clean energy has been identified as a key part of keeping the overshoot as “small and short as possible”. In 2025, renewables generated almost 34 per cent of global electricity, but this needs to be scaled up to 60–70 per cent by 2030 to help the world achieve a limited-overshoot scenario, according to UNEP’s report. Last year, wind and solar generated more EU electricity than fossil fuels for the first time, marking a major milestone in the transition to clean power. The latest analysis from SolarPower Europe found that EU solar generation alone has saved the bloc €33.8 billion in avoided gas imports since the beginning of the war on Iran. But despite a record €1.9 trillion being pumped into clean energy every year, green power only meets around 40 per cent of the increase in demand – which is being pushed up by energy-intensive air conditioning and the boom in artificial intelligence. Data centre energy consumption grew by 17 per cent in 2025, accounting for about 1.5 to two per cent of the global total, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). It’s expected to double by 2030. At the same time, Europe’s outdated power grids are struggling to keep up with the boom in renewables, meaning huge amounts of solar and wind are wasted every year or stuck in bottlenecks. While battery energy storage systems (BESS) can help solve this problem, experts warn that investment is still lacking.