Europe's record heat wave is forcing utilities to confront a rare supply shock. In southern France, the Golfech nuclear plant shut unit two after river water warmed beyond safe cooling limits, while unit one remains offline for scheduled maintenance. Neighboring grids imported electricity, pushing regional prices up.

Heat also drives demand. Across Europe only about 20% of homes have air‑conditioning, with the UK below 5% and Germany near 3%, but those figures are climbing as summers become harsher. Higher cooling loads combine with reduced plant efficiency and water‑scarce cooling, creating what Bruegel senior fellow Simone Tagliapietra calls a triple squeeze on the grid.

Grid operators, accustomed to winter peaks from electric heating, now face summer peaks that clash with planned outages. France’s EDF already had unit one down for refueling, leaving little margin. Such constraints threaten industrial output and consumer reliability. The episode underscores that utilities must redesign maintenance schedules and invest in heat‑resilient infrastructure or risk recurring brownouts as climate change pushes temperatures upward.