How to cope with the heatwave

It may be the heat, but the Italian public debate on climate change seems to be drowning in a sea of nonsense. The problem is not so much that scientists are being ignored – when it comes to shaping public policy, science does not confer any particular legitimacy – but rather that there seems to be a lack of consistency in articulating what needs to be done in the face of heatwaves, droughts and other events. As if it were enough simply to hope they won’t happen again. But hope, as they say, is not a strategy. We must therefore discuss what to do. First, however, it is worth ensuring that our diagnosis of the problem is clear. Otherwise, it goes without saying that the solution will be ill-suited and ill-conceived. So let’s start with the diagnosis.

Firstly, the climate is changing because the increase in human-induced greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is altering the planet’s energy balance. I don’t know how else to put it: this is a fact. The details obviously matter, and this isn’t the place for a physics lesson, but if you think you’ve uncovered factors that the scientific community hasn’t considered (volcanoes, sunspots, natural variability, ice ages, or some other assortment of facts found on the internet) or if you’ve read somewhere that not everyone agrees, you’re misinformed. There is no doubt that what is happening is anomalous and that we are causing it. This, as we shall see, has implications for what we need to do in Italy.

The fact that climate change is real and caused by our emissions does not mean that the problem is of apocalyptic and unmanageable proportions. Nothing is ever that simple. But spending time debating the science is a complete waste of time. There is no doubt that there is a serious problem, and to deny it is simply to delude oneself. The debate must focus on what to do, not on whether we should do anything.

Secondly, the change is not manifesting itself as a gradual rise in average temperatures but as a shift in meteorological and climatic statistics. You will no doubt have heard of the limit that we hope (with ever-dwindling conviction) to adhere to, as set out in the Paris Agreement: a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius in the global average temperature compared with the pre-industrial period. But nobody ‘feels’ the planet’s average temperature. Europe, for example, is warming much more rapidly due to a series of geographical and dynamic factors – relating to how the atmosphere and the ocean behave above and around the continent. We are already at an average of 2.5 degrees above historical temperatures. This, too, is a statistical construct. It doesn’t say much about what it actually feels like, for instance, on Via Indipendenza in Bologna or on Corso Magenta in Milan in mid-July.

This is perhaps the point that causes more confusion than any other. The events we are observing, which have an impact on people’s lives, are predominantly meteorological. In Europe, we experienced heatwaves in May, June and July, resulting in thousands of additional deaths due to high temperatures. It is estimated that in June alone, around ten thousand more people died, 90 per cent of whom were over 65. By the end of the year, we may find that these figures are underestimates. In France, 100,000 hectares have been burnt – three times the annual average – whilst in Spain, the fire in Ávila was the largest in the country’s history. Between the two, more than 300,000 people were evacuated.

These are meteorological events, an expression of the dynamics of the atmosphere and, to some extent, the ocean. But what makes them significant is that their characteristics – the frequency with which they are occurring, the intensity and nature of their development – are simply inexplicable without the contribution of an underlying change in the climate system’s statistics. The evidence on this is overwhelming. This matters because how we address these problems changes depending on whether we regard them as a contingent emergency – serious, but temporary – or as a symptom of a structural change in the conditions in which we operate.

In the first case, they would be treated as a series of emergencies, extreme deviations from the norm. This is what we are doing at the moment. We claim to be surprised, unaware, astonished.

We call on the civil protection agency to deal with floods, because it’s an emergency, whilst ignoring the fact that these are emergencies that now occur every year. We appoint commissioners, due to the ‘extraordinary’ nature of the drought, as if this exceptionality were grounds for waiving rules that would otherwise work, instead of simply recognising that the rules are inadequate. We find ourselves in a surreal situation: a bit like the people of the UAE being surprised every summer by how hot it gets in Dubai, only to forget all about it come winter.

The heat this summer has taken many by surprise with its intensity. We’re holding our breath and hoping it will pass. It’s madness. I will make a prediction without any fear of being proven wrong. There will be worse summers in our near future. And, now that we are in the midst of this heatwave and drought, let me also remind you that the floods of 2023 and 2024 will happen again with similar or greater intensity. What we have seen so far is the mildest version of what lies ahead. We must prepare ourselves.

    

It is perfectly clear that Italy’s future landscape will therefore be different from what we see today, with all due respect to those who think that the landscape is a static postcard, towards which we have only a duty to protect and not to develop. Our landscape is not the Colosseum. It is dynamic. Just over a hundred years ago, Italy had a third of the forests we have today, and agriculture employed 8 million people rather than the 800,000 of today. The landscape changes because we change, our economy changes, and because the conditions in which we operate change.

So what will the Italian landscape of the future look like?

Tackling heatwaves, floods and droughts requires physical interventions across the country and in our towns and cities. Investments to equip homes with air conditioning, to provide cities with green spaces that reduce the impacts of the urban heat island effect, a transport system organised to manage a society that must navigate difficult conditions, a water infrastructure and agricultural land management capable of accommodating greater rainfall variability, and more resilient agriculture.

In principle, all this is feasible. Our country will not be hotter than Arizona or Jordan today, drier than Nevada, or experience worse rainfall than Japanese typhoons. The problem is that transforming a country accustomed to a different climate comes at a cost. And investments must yield a return. The return on those investments will have to come from economic growth, which is in turn made possible by territorial transformation.

The frontier of innovation today lies in the use of artificial intelligence, in the automation of industrial production, and in the high value-added transformation that many Italian companies are already undertaking (which is why the country has become the world’s fourth-largest industrial exporter in recent years). All of this, therefore, must be undertaken with a view to an economy that will be predominantly digitalised, automated and, crucially, electrified. The heart of that economy – and of its competitiveness – is the national energy system; that, therefore, is where we must begin.

Consider the territorial transformation of the last century. Italian industrialisation was driven by supplying manufacturing companies with hydroelectric power, starting with Edison’s Bertini power station on the River Adda, which provided electricity to small textile firms in the Milan area. That electrification was financed in part by municipal contracts – the reason why Milan has had electric trams for over a hundred years. The tram, in turn, was used by the workers at those factories, creating a virtuous cycle of growth. A large part of the transformation of the country was driven by that experience, replicated across Italy’s many industrial areas, which collectively brought about a national transformation, facilitated by the state’s financial, planning and regulatory intervention.

The demand for electricity led to a transformation of the landscape, which in turn facilitated water management, the expansion of 19th-century agricultural land reclamation, and so on, until Mattei brought gas to Italy. The Italian landscape was transformed alongside its energy transition. It is inevitable that this history will repeat itself. The first chapter of this transformation must therefore focus on the energy infrastructure that will power the economic activities of the future, whilst managing the country’s vulnerabilities.

But here, the surreal national debate on energy really does risk leading us astray. Climate change is caused by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, particularly CO₂ produced by the combustion of coal, gas and oil. To bet, as many in Italy seem keen to do, that the global economy will not respond, is to fail to grasp reality. The transition is already underway.

Solar power has been the world’s largest source of new electricity for three years running. It is accelerating, with a 30 per cent increase in 2025 alone. Since 2015, it has grown tenfold. More generally, renewables accounted for 34 per cent of electricity generation in 2025, overtaking coal and growing faster than aggregate electricity demand.

By contrast, nuclear power – which is the subject of much discussion in Italy – has indeed seen an increase in output as old plants undergoing maintenance have been brought back online, but total capacity remains more or less static. Solar power doubles every three years, whilst nuclear power remains at around 10 per cent of the energy mix. Admittedly, there are new reactors under construction, so nuclear power will start to grow again, and there is no doubt that it is experiencing a renaissance, but this is primarily a Russian and Chinese story, centred on technology and enrichment capacity. It is not the solution to all our problems.

That said, fossil fuels will not disappear overnight, but the signs of obsolescence are beginning to show. It is not that exploration for new reserves has ceased, but most new investment in fossil fuels is aimed at replacing the output from wells that are running dry. Gas production is expanding, partly due to problems in Russia and the Middle East, but the idea that this sector will remain the dominant player in the energy or electricity sector of the future does not reflect reality. China, a country which, like Italy, has historically been dependent on gas and oil imports, offers an important indicator. In China, 2024 marked the first decline in oil consumption for transport, a sign of the colossal investments the country has made in electric vehicles: more than half of the cars registered there are electric.

 

This is not to say that China does not use oil or gas today – it is the world’s largest importer – but if we are discussing strategy – how we should prepare for the future – it is clear that the trends tell a story of electrification and a gradual move away from fossil fuels.

From a strategic perspective, therefore, this should be a positive sign for Italy – a country without fossil fuel resources, with significant solar and wind energy potential, and where the climate impacts are among the worst of all developed nations, requiring targeted investment. Yet, the country has so far been unable to effectively pursue the transition it clearly needs.

People will tell me that solar power in Italy has grown enormously. That’s true. In the near future, adding more solar capacity in Italy won’t increase generation capacity by much, because the problem is supplying electricity when the sun isn’t shining. But we should be doing other things. We can invest in energy storage systems, and in onshore and offshore wind power. But here the debate takes an incomprehensible turn. We get sidetracked by discussions about the cost of renewables, but only those who do not understand how prices are formed in the electricity market think that the problem of high energy prices is down to them. The marginal source of electricity generation in Italy is, and always has been, gas, and it is the cost of gas that is driving up prices across the system.

The problem is not the economics of individual renewable technologies – which are now clearly competitive – but how to transform a system optimised for a fuel that we have been importing for sixty years. This is well understood by industry experts but rarely debated in public. There is a persistent tendency to confuse a discussion of technological choice with a discussion of industrial transformation. It is likely that gas will continue to form part of our energy mix for many years to come, but the question is how to chart a course towards energy independence. This is not merely a matter of production, but of grid infrastructure, distribution, regional management, technology policy and market regulation.

A country that relies on solar, wind, hydroelectric power, batteries, geothermal energy and a decreasing mix of gas and, perhaps, nuclear power will have a very different landscape from the current one, with wind turbines and solar installations occupying land prone to landslides and flooding, thermal power stations dependent on cooling water that may not be available, and which power data centres competing for electricity with the air conditioning of users struggling to keep cool. Tackling the energy problem is therefore essential for managing the territorial changes that lie ahead and serves as a catalyst for focusing attention on the local area.

     

Then there is the physical transformation of the territory as a whole. When it comes to heat, we face a structural problem of maladaptation. Italy’s medieval towns were not designed to cope with weeks of temperatures exceeding 35 degrees Celsius. The water infrastructure that has built up over the centuries has never had to cope with the annual frequency of rainfall such as we have seen in recent years.

Estimates of the cost that these constant disruptions impose on the normal functioning of the economy are now multiplying: estimates range from 2 to 7 per cent of GDP, depending on the time horizons and projected future conditions. It is easy to see where these costs come from. When it is hot for several weeks a year, outdoor labour productivity falls dramatically. When logistics are disrupted by extreme weather, delivery times are delayed and the infrastructure on which production relies for the rest of the year deteriorates. This acts as a brake on the national economy.

Furthermore, major demographic trends are altering the circumstances of the population and driving up costs. As the country ages, social vulnerability becomes an economic issue. If temperatures exceed 35 degrees, mortality among people over 65 rises by around 20 per cent, placing significant strain on hospital services that are already under pressure and imposing enormous costs on society as a whole. It is abundantly clear that this is a structural problem of the utmost importance in the management of the country’s economy.

There are many things that can be done. ‘Heat action plans’ such as the one recently presented in Rome offer a range of sensible and necessary measures, ranging from the creation of green spaces to the installation of air conditioning in public buildings. But if the problem is structural, the scale of the response will have to go beyond what a single city or local authority can achieve. If we were to adopt American levels of air conditioning, the electricity grid would face a different problem. If systematic work on buildings is required, unavoidable questions will arise regarding the balance between heritage conservation and preparing for conditions that we have never experienced in the country’s history.

All this will come at a cost. Estimates vary, but adapting the economy as it stands today is estimated to cost at least 10–15 billion a year. However, this does not take into account the investment required to transform the economy itself – a prerequisite for being able to afford adaptation. For whilst it is true that adapting means saving costs for the economy in the future, it is also true that these savings do not constitute actual funds that can be used to finance the necessary measures. Added value is needed.

All this requires a public sector capable of planning the transition, working with the private sector and local authorities to develop projects, working with the Commission and European institutions to mobilise funding, and implementing measures to achieve the desired outcomes. And it is here, far removed from technological issues and scientific debates, that the national debate should focus: on the administrative state’s capacity to drive the country forward in this transition.

It may come as a surprise that a discussion on climate and the local area should lead us to talk about the public sector, but this is the one major element missing from today’s debate: there is no solution that will enable us to tackle what lies ahead in the coming years – heatwaves, droughts and floods – that does not require a radical improvement in the administration’s ability to achieve tangible results within a foreseeable timeframe across the local area. Our institutional framework and the system of incentives that governs it are the problem.

The reform of public administration is a decades-long story. The management of public affairs in Italy has always been inseparable from its natural territorial structure, and indeed the first major period of transformation coincided with the creation of the ordinary-statute regions in the 1970s. Massimo Severo Giannini wrote about this in 1979, when, in his report "on the main problems of state administration", he identified the difficulties faced by a state that was required not only to exercise authority, but also to deliver services, redistribute wealth and invest in infrastructure across a fragmented territory.

We’ll look at this today. The Po River Basin Authority is well aware that river management must be planned on the basis of a vision for agriculture and the productive fabric that spans several regions. Data centres need water – where do we put them? Where should investment in automation and mechanical engineering be prioritised? Which crops should be encouraged to boost exports? Which ones for food security? And if the Po floods, who pays for the management of the flood? And if there isn’t enough water for both the rice in the Vercelli area and the peaches in Romagna, as well as for the data centres, who decides who has to go without? And if the heatwave requires interventions on the grid and means sacrificing land for electricity generation, who bears those costs? The problem stems from a regional plan, but no institution has ultimate responsibility for providing and implementing answers to these questions.

We find ourselves in the wake of decades of reforms that were essentially blind to this aspect. In the 1990s, the famous “season of reforms” brought about a series of significant changes: local autonomy, the Cassese reform to separate political direction from administrative management, the Bassanini law on administrative federalism, and finally the constitutional reform of Title V. On paper, these reforms were intended to lead to a civil service that was more independent of political favours and more business-like, with a more productive relationship between local authorities and central government. As is often the case, however, their actual implementation produced the exact opposite result. An administration increasingly unable to tackle local problems and a structure increasingly paralysed by confusion over responsibilities. The reform of Title V, in particular, has created overlapping areas of competence between the state, the regions and various bodies, multiplying the number of actors capable of blocking any decision.

There were subsequent attempts to set things right. But the 2009 Brunetta reform, which aimed to create a corporate and meritocratic civil service, was scuppered by the 2010 debt crisis when Tremonti imposed a pay freeze, and the 2015 Madia reform, which sought to make state managers more accountable, was scuppered by the defeat of the 2016 constitutional referendum, which was intended to resolve the chaos created by the reform of Title V – an insurmountable obstacle to state public managers taking responsibility for territorial decisions.

We have seen the effects of this with the NRRP, which has brought enormous resources into the country alongside powerful constraints external to national policy. Where the country had centralised capacity to develop and implement projects – such as in the case of the railways or digitalisation – we have managed to make significant progress on planned expenditure. However, in the regional areas of hydrogeological and urban safety, the funds originally allocated – already minimal in relation to the scale of the problem – were cut. The reason? The supposed inability of local authorities to organise and carry out projects within the required timeframe.

This, then, is the story of this summer’s heatwave, and it is worth remembering even when the scorching heat of recent months gives way to the inevitable autumn floods: the problem lies in the executive and administrative capacity of our public institutions. It is true, we have tried to reform them in the past, but failed. Yet we must try again, because failing to do so means condemning the country to a future spent between fans and flood-hit living rooms, whilst the elderly die and the young leave.