Possibly the single best purchase your British-based columnist has ever made was buying a portable air conditioning unit around three years and a half ago. It was not cheap to buy, nor is it cheap to run, and it generally spends most of the year in a cupboard. It was acquired in the winter of 2022/23 following on from the summer 2022 heatwaves. It saw only a few days of usage each year between 2023 and 2025, but over the course of a few months this year it seemed to rarely not be in use as four distinct heatwaves rolled over the country over the course of four months.
As the BBC notes, UK heat records have been smashed this Spring and Summer.
- A temperature of 30C or higher has been recorded on 40 separate days. The previous record was 34 days, set in 1995.
- A temperature of 35C or higher has been recorded on 10 separate days. The previous record was five days, set in 1976 and matched in 2020.
- A temperature of 35C or higher was recorded in four calendar months: May, June, July and August. The previous record was two calendar months.
- A temperature of 37C or higher has been recorded on three separate days, which is a new record. 37C+ has only been recorded nine times in the UK – three of which have occurred this year.
And the UK escaped relatively lightly.
At least 35,000 more people died during Europe’s four record-breaking, back-to-back heatwaves this summer than would normally be expected, according to incomplete figures from barely half the continent.
Excess mortality in three of the EU’s larger countries – Germany, France and Spain – alone has already exceeded 25,000, according to the provisional national figures, and experts say the toll will rise significantly once August totals are consolidated.
The consecutive heatwaves across western Europe since May shattered all-time historical temperature records across hundreds of weather stations, and France recorded its hottest national average day on record.
Records fell for three straight days in Germany in late June, when 46 stations topped 40C (104F), while Spain endured persistent highs above 42C.
To which one can add devastating wildfires.
This week, after a (hopefully cool) summer break, the Clark Center’s European Experts Panel returned with a poll on some of the economic – and policy – fallout from Europe’s baking hot summer.
The panel was first asked whether ‘this summer’s extreme weather in Europe will lead to substantial upward revisions to assessments of the near-term economic costs of the physical risks from climate change’?
Weighted by confidence, almost 70% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed. As Franklin Allen of Imperial College London nicely summarised, ‘This summer was exceptional in Europe, even in comparison to recent summers. Once people in Europe realise how dangerous the heat is, particularly for old people, air conditioning will be used much more. There will be many other changes necessary to mitigate the heat’.
And while the extreme weather might focus attention, as Agnès Bénassy-Quéré of the Paris School of Economics noted, helpfully pointing to some NGFS research, it should not come as a surprise.
But if the results were fairly decisive when it came to predicting that the heat waves of 2026 would lead to some upward revisions of the near-term economic costs of climate change, the panel was less sure on exactly what this means for climate policy.
A plurality of 48% – again weighted by confidence – was uncertain when asked if ‘because current emissions reductions will have little effect on the climate experienced during today’s voters’ lifetimes, this summer’s extreme weather events in Europe are unlikely to persuade people to vote for more ambitious near-term climate policy’, with the rest quite evenly split between agreement and disagreement.
The argument here is, perhaps, a complex one for much of the public to grasp. As Christian Leuz of Chicago Booth, who was himself uncertain, explained, ‘I agree with the statement that effects of current emissions reductions are long-term, but it is not clear to me how widely this is understood. Thus, it is still possible that the events will increase the support for more ambitious policies, even though effects will not be short term’.
Olivier Blanchard, of the Peterson Institute, who did agree, argued that the political economy factors point to an easier path for climate adaptation than mitigation – ‘Adaptation: quick, private, gains. Mitigation: slow, social, gains. Politics: adaptation over mitigation.
The panel was once more aligned when it came to a question around insurance markets. Weighted, as ever, by confidence, a majority either agreed or strongly agreed that ‘Upward revisions of insurance premiums for physical risks associated with climate change following this summer’s extreme weather events in Europe would indicate that insurance and reinsurance markets have historically underpriced those risks’, although almost one third of respondents did disagree.
One of those disagreeing, Jan Pieter Krahnen of the Goethe Institute argued that, ‘I rather think that the underlying moments of the climate risk distribution has shifted recently towards higher expected damage levels. The premium adjustment we are now expecting may well influence climate risk mitigation, partly substituting for the suppressed policy actions’. In a related comment, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré noted that ‘The insurance sector is well aware of the size of the problem. What is missing is a scheme that incentivizes adaptation measures to make insurance affordable, and at the same time allows for better risk mutualisation across insurers. Cat bonds, public-private partnerships…’.
Whatever the outcomes for wider climate policy, it certainly seems clear that – in the short to medium term at least – Europe needs to ramp on adaptation measures quickly if the excess deaths of this year are to be avoided. More people across the continent will soon be buying AC units.
