Let's be honest, right here in the United States of America, we do most things better than Europe. Maybe France makes better wines (I'm not a wine expert, so not too sure on that one), and maybe the Dutch grow prettier tulips. And, well, Irish whiskey is pretty darn good, as is a nice 18-year-old Scotch. But most things, sorry, Europe, but America has you beat. We make everything bigger, prettier, tougher, faster, and prouder than you guys, and we've been doing that for a long time. Heck, most European countries don't have enough room for the United States to park our trucks.
Here's another example: Europe is suffering from a hot summer this year. That's not that unusual. The whole Northern Hemisphere seems to be having a hot summer. Honestly, we could use a little of that right here in the Susitna Valley, where it's 49 degrees and raining at the moment, but we're talking about the nation as a whole - and yes, the USA is having a hot summer, too. But there's one big difference: We have air conditioning.
A recent piece in Fortune by Taco Engelaar, Senior Vice President and Managing Director at Neara, points out that most of Europe doesn't have that luxury, despite it being 100-year-old technology.
Find yourself in the U.S. this week and you’ll likely move seamlessly between air-conditioned offices, malls, and homes, barely registering the heat outside.
In Europe, that same week means hunting for a desk fan or racing to one of the few public spaces with real cooling.
Around 90% of U.S. homes have air conditioning; in parts of Europe, that figure is closer to 20%. While America was built to cope with high temperatures, vast areas of Europe remain woefully unprepared.
Well, granted, but parts of the United States regularly see higher temperatures than almost anywhere in Europe. Just ask anyone who lives in Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona. But that's beside the point. It's not that America was built to cope with high temperatures; it's that Europe could deal with higher temperatures all along, and blew it.
The heat has been rising in Europe for years. This latest heatwave is not an isolated event — each summer brings higher temperatures and greater risks for infrastructure and public health.
A year ago, I wrote about the economic cost of Europe’s cooling gap. That liability has hardened into an unavoidable threat. The heat is on, and adaptation is critical.
Well, here's the required adaptation: Air conditioning.
Read More: Beyond the Models: The Truth About U.S. Heat Wave History
Normalized Data Debunks Europe's 'Soaring Climate Damage' Story
But wait! There's more! Another problem may forestall the European adoption of AC: Their antiquated grid.
Europe’s aging grid infrastructure was not designed to cope with the heat.
This week demonstrated the impact. Tens of thousands of homes were left without power in France as the grid buckled under the heat. In the U.K., the national grid operator made its first-ever summertime plea for more power
,as forecasts predicted an imbalance between supply and demand. Meanwhile, sagging electrical lines threatened to bring some rail services to a standstill.America’s grid faces similar physical stress from heat — overheating cables, sagging lines — but Europe faces an additional layer: a critical lack of capacity to absorb new demand from cooling infrastructure.
But it's not just the grid that's the problem. It's generation capacity, which Fortune waves off as a "critical lack of capacity to absorb new demand."
In the last few decades, Europe has relied more and more on "green" energy sources, mostly wind and solar. They do this, of course, in the name of climate change, They have been dismantling nuclear power plants and halting any construction of natural gas plants, for the most part. As recently as 2005, about 10 percent of Europe's energy production was wind and solar; now, it's over 25 percent. In the years to come, it's expected to approach half. Half of Europe's vital electrical generation will be from low-density, intermittent sources, feeding into an antiquated grid. All this while Europe, yes, is warming, as it has been since the end of the last major glaciation, and as it likely will for at least a few thousand more years, until the planet tips back into another major glaciation.
And, as I'm continually pointing out, no modern society has ever profited from a retrograde move in the energy density of that society's primary energy source.
As extreme weather intensifies, Europe needs data-led planning to build the cooling capacity that America’s example proves is achievable — without letting the infrastructure collapse in the process.
Europe can’t simply copy the American blueprint, but it has no choice but to act. Fail to adapt, and as temperatures climb, Europe will sweat the consequences while its neighbors across the Atlantic keep their cool.
And yet copying the American blueprint is precisely what Europe should do. By the American blueprint, I mean the Trump administration blueprint: Traditional, high-density energy sources. Natural gas, oil, nuclear power, and, yes, coal are the needful solutions for Europe. But, until the various governments of Europe stop taking their marching orders from climate scolds and activists, the people of Europe will continue to suffer from the heat.
