Built on public data · summer 2026, live
Shutters. Cold showers. "Drink water." Close the schools. Open a "cooling center." A nap. A freshly painted white roof. Europe will try anything except the one machine that keeps a person alive at 40°C, and it is not just homes. It is the trains, the classrooms, the hospitals, the care homes.
AC is not a crime.
We mustn’t do it everywhere, otherwise we run the risk of warming up the country, and so it’s a bad solution.
Agnes Pannier-Runacher, French Minister for Ecological Transition, on air conditioning, during the July 2025 heatwave. The Local France, 2025
Meanwhile, the heat keeps its own count
Summer 2026, live. On this year's heat, Italy is on track for ~17,719 deaths, Spain ~9,138. Where will it hit hardest? →
Adaptation theater
Each one is real public policy. None of them is the machine that works.
When the classroom passes 30°C, Europe’s fix is no classroom. France shut roughly 1,350 schools in the June 2025 heatwave. And 6% of Italian schools have air conditioning. Six. Reuters / AFP, 2025
The official plan when your home bakes: leave it. Barcelona now runs 500+ "climate shelters", and brags that 99.2% of residents live within a 10-minute walk of one. A city-wide confession that the homes do not work. Barcelona City Council, 2026
French health advice for a heatwave: spend "2 to 3 hours a day in a cool place: a cinema, a library, a supermarket, a museum." Translation: go enjoy someone else’s air conditioning. Just do not put one in your bedroom. Santé publique France, 2025
It is not just homes
The trains, the classrooms, the wards, the care homes. A continent that feels undeveloped the moment it gets hot.
EU law caps the temperature for transporting cattle at 30°C. London’s Victoria line has hit 33.6°C, and the deep Tube lines have no air conditioning at all, the tunnels are too tight to vent the heat it would add. Europe gives its cattle a cooling standard it denies its commuters.
IMechE; EU Reg 1/2005British rail is built to a "stress-free" 27°C. At 30°C in the air the steel reaches about 50°C and starts to buckle, so trains slow or stop. In July 2022 the line between London and Edinburgh shut for hours.
Network Rail, 2022Italy’s education ministry says 6% of schools have air conditioning, and most were built before 1992. When the classroom bakes, the official fix is to send the children home.
Italian education ministry / AFP, 2025The same machine
A reversible heat pump is an air conditioner: same box, run backwards. The EU wants 30 million more installed by 2030 and pays up to 70% of the cost, sold as "heating." The cooling is right there, switched off.
Many heat pumps can provide cooling, too, which eliminates the need for a separate air conditioner...
International Energy Agency, The Future of Heat Pumps. IEA, 2022
Richer than Korea, cooled like 1955
Sorted by wealth. The richer the country, the emptier the AC bar.
GDP per capita (nominal): IMF World Economic Outlook, 2026 . Household AC adoption: IEA, 2018 . Germany, the UK, France and Italy each out-earn South Korea and Japan, and cool a fraction as many homes.
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