Climate: Thinking Things Through

By Andrew Stuttaford

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

 

For a long time now, climate policymakers have been warning about the heatwaves that would be coming Europe’s way, and sooner rather than later.

 

As that was what they expected, it would have made sense to make sure that electricity grids could cope with the additional summertime demand (in Europe, a largely temperate continent that makes far less use of air conditioning than the U.S., electricity demand has traditionally been higher in winter than in summer), a process that would not involve scrapping power stations reliant on the wrong sort of fuel.

 

However, scrapping reliable power stations is what the Europeans did, increasingly turning to “renewables,” systems plagued by the problems caused by intermittency (the sun does not always shine, the wind does not always blow), before making sure that there would be sufficient power when the predicted heat arrived. In other words, as central planners are wont to do, they got things the wrong way round. Greening Europe’s grid is not going to make a material difference to the climate any time soon, meaning that ensuring that Europe could weather hotter temperatures should logically have been a higher priority.

 

But it wasn’t.

 

The Financial Times:

 

Europe’s energy systems have come under intense strain this summer as repeated heatwaves have driven up demand for electricity and forced plants to pause production. June was the hottest on record in western Europe, fueling a rise in the use of air conditioning and prompting a sharp increase in electricity prices.

 

Most parts of the region experienced at least two intense periods of heat in June and July, with some suffering more.

 

Total electricity demand in the EU during the two-week height of the June 23 to July 3 heatwave rose by 7.5 per cent year-on-year, according to figures from industry body Eurelectric.

 

The FT reports Eurelectric’s secretary-general saying that that grid operators were facing a “tough reality” and “need to be prepared.”

 

The question, however, was not whether Europe’s grid operators were preparing for climate change, but how they were preparing for it. Rather than opting for adaptation — boosting, retaining, and toughening reliable capacity — they sank billions into climate mitigation schemes which, even on their own numbers, were not going to make any difference to the climate any time soon.

 

It’s almost as if climate policymakers wanted Europeans to suffer through a very hot summer in order to make a point about the climate “crisis,” but no, that’s crazy talk. . . .

 

Meanwhile, on the topic of thinking things through, there’s this:

 

[S]olar generation reached a record high in June in Europe, up 22 per cent on the previous year, which Ember said kept the “grid well supplied during daytime hours” in most locations. “The surplus of solar energy during the day helped prevent blackouts.

 

However, the use of energy storage is still insufficient, leading to reduced energy supply after sunset. This translated into a sharp increase in electricity prices,” said Pawel Czyzak, Europe programme director at Ember.

 

There’s less sunshine at night?

 

Amazing if true.