Fwd: London’s unbearably hot homes
Loretta Lohman
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The heat wave searing Europe has broken day and night temperature records in France and is making life unbearable for Londoners who live in modern apartments built just two decades ago. Today’s newsletter looks at the changes cities in Europe need to make to adapt to the fast-warming climate as heat waves become more frequent, intense and prolonged. We also bring you the latest from London Climate Action Week. Subscribe to Bloomberg Green for unlimited access to all our coverage. ‘Unbearable heat’In Britain’s capital city, an architectural trend that started about two decades ago is now being linked to unbearable levels of indoor heat. The culprit is box-style apartment buildings with sheer facades and huge windows, often only on one side so there’s no way to create a through-draft. And with temperatures this week set to rise to around 35C (95F), those living in such designs say they’re struggling to cope. Alex Long, a 26-year-old video editor, lives in a three-bedroom apartment in a modern development in Bermondsey, south London. His living room has large south-facing windows that cover almost the entire length and height of one of the walls.  Back when
New London Vernacular homes were being erected en
masse across the capital, the idea was to get away
from the perceived shortcomings of earlier styles.
Photographer:
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images via Getty Images Europe
“Sunrise to sunset, our flat is being absolutely blasted by the sun at all times,” he says. He and his roommates avoid the living room in the summer, Long said. “It’s just so hot and you can’t escape it,” he said. “It’s such an unbearable heat.” The architectural style — sometimes referred to as New London Vernacular — has emerged as a particularly challenging design against the backdrop of rising temperatures. Tom Dollard, an architect at Pollard Thomas Edwards and director of the Good Homes Alliance, an industry group, says that in some cases, “even a massive air conditioning unit” can’t help. And even if air conditioning could be relied upon to fix the issue, the office of London Mayor Sadiq Khan has said it expects the city’s residents to explore other options first. It worries that the added energy consumption of widespread AC use would raise greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to urban heat islands, as the hot air sucked out of buildings gets pushed onto city streets. Policymakers and academics are aware that change is needed to make Londoners’ lives more bearable in the age of climate change. The office of the Mayor of London is due to publish a report on Thursday that’s expected to lay out some of its plans for how to tackle urban heat.  Glass-fronted
balconies on modern apartments in London.
Photographer:
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images via Getty Images Europe
Faiz Abbas, 31, a software engineer, says he’s struggled to sleep and work from home in his two-bed apartment in south London. “It’s hard to concentrate. I don’t like to sweat at my desk,” he says. His building, which has floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and was new when he bought it in 2019, has mechanical ventilation. But Abbas says it doesn’t reduce the temperature. Joseph Dowling, a 47-year-old video-game developer who lives a few miles away in a similar development with his wife and baby daughter, said his family struggled after London temperatures breached 40C in 2022, a history-making moment for the city. Once the temperature surpassed 27C or 28C, “the heat just wouldn’t leave,” he says. Both he and Abbas say they’ve since invested in air conditioning. Read
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Low take-up7% Of homes in Britain are equipped with air conditioning, double the rate from just three years ago. Contradicting trends“We live in this incredible moment where the line of climate-related manifestations and nature degradation, it goes up exponentially” Frank Elderson European Central Bank executive board member At the same time, political willingness and ability to do something about that is going down, he said at an event at London Climate Action Week London climate week updateBy Akshat Rathi and Alastair Marsh British International Investment, a UK government development finance institution, announced it exceeded $1 billion in climate finance in 2025 — the first time it’s achieved the feat. Some of the biggest deals included funding renewables in India, electric motorbikes in Kenya and batteries in Egypt. In its annual report, published to coincide with London Climate Action Week, BII said its investment portfolio now exceeds 1,700 companies and generates 3.8% in returns. Its climate investments in the last four years add up to $3.3 billion. Overall, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband declared that the government has secured for the UK more than £100 billion in clean energy investment announcements since it came to office. The sum includes many projects under Miliband’s Clean Power Mission, but also the spending plans of clean-energy companies in the UK. Meanwhile, Turkey is trying to back its role as co-host of COP31 with demonstrable climate action. At the Türkiye Energy Transition Investment Forum, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar said the country is on a “determined journey toward energy transition” both to meet its net-zero emissions goal and to ensure energy security. The country has an ambition to quadruple domestic wind and solar energy capacity by 2035. With Turkey a growing destination for energy transition investment, bankers from HSBC and BBVA discussed financing structures to get money flowing towards low-carbon projects. This week’s Zero listenThe key to tackling climate change is moving away from burning fossil fuels to using renewable energy. But in his book More and More and More, French historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues that the world has never actually managed a successful energy transition before and current plans are unrealistic. Many have taken his writing to mean that stopping global warming is impossible, however, he tells Akshat Rathi this week on Zero, his view is actually quite different. Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday. More from GreenWatch: Europe heat wave coverage
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