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

During the summer of 2026, more than 1.5 billion people across the globe faced dangerous levels of heat, according to a report from Climate Central. Nearly nine out of every ten Europeans experienced a month's worth of "risky heat," marking Europe as the most unusually hot place on the planet. Researchers classified "risky heat" as days with temperatures hotter than 90 percent of what locals had experienced between 1991 and 2020.

The study identified 203 countries where the average person faced at least 30 days of risky heat, with seven of the top ten countries located in Europe.

France led the list, recording the highest temperature anomalies worldwide, with an increase of 3.5 degrees Celsius above the historical norm. This presented a troubling warning sign, according to Kristina Dahl of Climate Central. She emphasized that the summer's widespread heat was a clear indication that human-driven warming was pushing communities beyond safe physical limits, and that the economic and human costs of fossil fuels were becoming increasingly apparent.

Simon Steill, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), further highlighted the spiralling costs of the climate crisis caused by humanity's reliance on coal, oil, and gas. He underscored the urgency for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy, which is not only cheaper but also safer.

The summer's extreme heat was part of a broader trend, with the United Nations warning that global warming had now surpassed the legally binding threshold of 1.5°C, set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. The UN Environment Programme projected a best-case scenario of 1.8°C warming, with higher estimates in other scenarios. The analysis suggested that overshoot, peak, and decline might be our best-case scenario moving forward.

The transition to clean energy was identified as a crucial element in limiting the overshoot. In 2025, renewables generated nearly 34 percent of global electricity, but this must be increased to 60–70 percent by 2030 to achieve a limited overshoot scenario. Wind and solar power had already surpassed fossil fuels in the EU in 2025, with solar generation alone saving the bloc €33.8 billion in avoided gas imports since the start of the war in Iran.

However, despite a record €1.9 trillion being invested annually in clean energy, green power only met around 40 percent of the increase in demand, which was driven by energy-intensive air conditioning and the growth of artificial intelligence. Data center energy consumption had grown by 17 percent in 2025, accounting for about 1.5 to 2 percent of the global total, and was expected to double by 2030.

Europe's outdated power grids were struggling to accommodate the surge in renewables, causing much of the solar and wind energy to be wasted or face bottlenecks. Although battery energy storage systems (BESS) could help address this issue, experts warned that investment in this area was still lacking.