A Hotter World Needs a Stronger GRID
I was in Kilkenny, Ireland during the July 2013 Great Britain and Ireland heatwave. Lacking the awareness I have now, I recall the amusement I shared with my newly acquainted Californian travel buddies at the townsfolk who were struggling to tolerate the “heat”. It was 29.6°C (about 85.3°F), with zero clouds, a mild breeze, and no humidity. For context, an Irish summer at the time was typically 57-60°F on average. So, perfect weather to us… but a sweltering nightmare for the locals. Imagine newspapers, work folders, and flyers doubling as fans; jackets, sweaters, and cardigans now hug everyone’s waists; a shirtless man, drenched in sweat and red as the sun he loudly curses, sprawls across a wooden bench, his eyes closed and face turned accusingly toward the sky. Certainly, a sight to behold at the time.
Fast forward to now: this month the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has announced exceeding 1.5°C is now widely assessed as unavoidable under current trajectories and the new goal must be to limit how high and long the temperatures surpass that threshold while continuing work to bring them back down. What sounds like a small change in temperature can cause ripple effects from extreme heat to the quality of the air we breathe, energy and water we depend on, and the infrastructure we will need to build for a warmer world.
Warmer Than You Think
A global average isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. An additional half degree of warming across the planet doesn’t necessarily mean everything, everywhere, all at once just gets half a degree hotter. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), torrid extremes become more frequent and intense as global temperatures rise, and in many regions the hottest days are expected to warm faster than the global average. Can you feel the heat?
The difference between 1.5°C and 2°C is more substantial than it may sound. A higher global average shifts the conditions in which weather happens. Heat waves can become hotter and more frequent, heavier rainfall can intensify in many places, and drought risk can increase in others. The exact effects vary by region, but it’s important to note: when the baseline changes, so do the extremes built on top of it.
Those changes also place pressure on systems that were designed around a different climate. Roads, buildings, water systems and electric grids all have limits, and extreme conditions have a way of pushing them. Few systems make that clearer than electricity.
Residential solar installation in southern California
Unless You’ve Got Power! (Hahahaha)
When temperatures rise, so does our need for cooling. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, that is until millions of homes and businesses require air conditioning at roughly the same time.
This July, during a heat wave, electricity demand across most of Texas reached a record 91.1 gigawatts in a single hour, 6 percent higher than the previous record set in 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Electricity during extreme heat is doing far more than keeping us comfortable and the scale of that demand is significant. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that rising air-conditioning use and higher temperatures could add roughly 500 gigawatts to global peak electricity demand by 2035.
Cooling is only one part of that growing demand, some of the very changes needed to reduce climate pollution also require us to use more electricity. Gas-powered cars become electric vehicles, fossil fuel heating can be replaced with heat pumps, and some industrial processes can be electrified. At the same time, demand is rising from new buildings, expanding digital infrastructure like data centers, and other changes in how we live and work. All of that puts greater pressure on how we generate and manage power, making cleaner electricity, better efficiency, and a grid capable of handling that growth increasingly important.
Cooling Off, but Cleaner
This is where organizations like GRID can answer the call. Solar is particularly useful because some of the highest electricity demand for air conditioning occurs on hot, sunny days, when solar generation is also strong. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, solar and battery storage helped grids meet high summer electricity demand in 2024, including during periods of extreme heat.
Battery storage can extend that benefit beyond daylight hours. The U.S. Department of Energy notes that batteries can store solar electricity when generation is high and make it available later, including during summer afternoons and evenings when cooling demand can remain high even as the sun begins to set. There are also emerging approaches that use solar energy more directly for cooling, including solar thermal systems that use heat from the sun to help power cooling equipment.
At GRID Alternatives, solar and battery storage are already part of the work we do to expand access to clean energy and resilience. As cooling becomes more important in a warmer climate, these technologies offer one way to meet that need without contributing significantly to climate pollution in the process.
Adapting, Not Surrendering
Hearing that the world is now widely expected to exceed 1.5°C may seem like a lot, fortunately, that is not what the UNEP is saying. Its Limiting Overshoot report makes the opposite case, and we will have to adapt to changes already underway while continuing to prevent worse ones. That means cleaner electricity, stronger and more resilient infrastructure, smarter use of resources like water, and some creativity about how all of those pieces work together.
Looking back at Kilkenny now, the difference between a few degrees feels a lot more significant than it did thirteen years ago.
