How France aims to keep the power on as temperatures soar
And the capital wasn't the only place affected on June 23rd, as temperatures soared - outages were reported on the same day in Occitanie, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, and Centre-Val-de-Loire – leaving some 13,000 customers without power.
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Paris blackout caused by heatwave, says network operator
The city of Tours, in western France, suffered two 'successive and exceptional outages due to the heat' that left some 5,000 households without power.
And this is far from being solely a French problem - a particularly intense heatwave in Sicily in 2023 saw blackouts that lasted up to a week in some areas.
'Very high temperatures over several days with temperatures that do not drop at night cause the temperature of the tarmac to rise by several dozen degrees (on the surface), which put severe strain on the underground networks,' the French grid operator Enedis explained in a statement.
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So, these incidents weren't isolated and were all linked to recognised climate change. The next question is: why hasn't anything been done to mitigate the effects of climate change on a power network we're all increasingly dependent on?
It's the wrong question. Because Enedis has been undertaking a major modernisation programme to replace older cables that are vulnerable to high temperatures for the past 16 years, and make the entire national grid more resilient.
The city of Paris is in the middle of a massive project to replace its underground electricity cables with heat-resistant ones, after an emergency planning exercise designed to test the city's readiness for the day the temperature hits 50C revealed a major risk of blackouts.
Since 2009, it has replaced 100km of underground cables annually in the French capital alone, with newer, more resilient ones capable of handling the high temperatures the city faces as a result of climate change.
Cables laid as late as the 1970s were conceived to resist temperatures up to 90C. But when heat is trapped for days under the asphalt, they can reach 120-130C, increasing the risk of failure.
These near 50-year-old cables are replaced with more robust modern ones that are better insulated and more able to withstand higher temperatures. As heatwaves become more frequent and more intense, urgency is understandable – but these things take time.
Already, however, the effects of the upgrades are being felt. 'We are reducing the number of incidents by a factor of 33,' an Enedis spokesperson told
Franceinfo
.
Enedis plans to phase out the obsolete cables in all French cities by 2050.
And it is working with specialists to model the effect of climate change on different regions in France so it can target its €1 billion a year modernisation programme where, and how it is most needed.
In Brittany, north-western France, for example, wind is a bigger issue than heat. 'So we need to have different resilience programmes for each part of the country,' Enedis said.
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Flagship projects in Indre-et-Loire and Ardèche, meanwhile, are seeing electricity cables buried underground to prevent outages caused by winds, snow and storms, which can lead to outages – due, for example, to branches or trees falling on to power lines.
Today, some 98.4 percent of new medium-voltage lines are buried – the higher cost of maintenance and repairs more than covered by the reduction in the number of outages caused by extreme weather.
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Local France
3 days ago
- Local France
How France aims to keep the power on as temperatures soar
A blackout that struck the heart of Paris at the height of June's heatwave was caused by high temperatures, according to supplier Enedis. And the capital wasn't the only place affected on June 23rd, as temperatures soared - outages were reported on the same day in Occitanie, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, and Centre-Val-de-Loire – leaving some 13,000 customers without power. READ ALSO Paris blackout caused by heatwave, says network operator The city of Tours, in western France, suffered two 'successive and exceptional outages due to the heat' that left some 5,000 households without power. And this is far from being solely a French problem - a particularly intense heatwave in Sicily in 2023 saw blackouts that lasted up to a week in some areas. 'Very high temperatures over several days with temperatures that do not drop at night cause the temperature of the tarmac to rise by several dozen degrees (on the surface), which put severe strain on the underground networks,' the French grid operator Enedis explained in a statement. Advertisement So, these incidents weren't isolated and were all linked to recognised climate change. The next question is: why hasn't anything been done to mitigate the effects of climate change on a power network we're all increasingly dependent on? It's the wrong question. Because Enedis has been undertaking a major modernisation programme to replace older cables that are vulnerable to high temperatures for the past 16 years, and make the entire national grid more resilient. The city of Paris is in the middle of a massive project to replace its underground electricity cables with heat-resistant ones, after an emergency planning exercise designed to test the city's readiness for the day the temperature hits 50C revealed a major risk of blackouts. Since 2009, it has replaced 100km of underground cables annually in the French capital alone, with newer, more resilient ones capable of handling the high temperatures the city faces as a result of climate change. Cables laid as late as the 1970s were conceived to resist temperatures up to 90C. But when heat is trapped for days under the asphalt, they can reach 120-130C, increasing the risk of failure. These near 50-year-old cables are replaced with more robust modern ones that are better insulated and more able to withstand higher temperatures. As heatwaves become more frequent and more intense, urgency is understandable – but these things take time. Already, however, the effects of the upgrades are being felt. 'We are reducing the number of incidents by a factor of 33,' an Enedis spokesperson told Franceinfo . Enedis plans to phase out the obsolete cables in all French cities by 2050. And it is working with specialists to model the effect of climate change on different regions in France so it can target its €1 billion a year modernisation programme where, and how it is most needed. In Brittany, north-western France, for example, wind is a bigger issue than heat. 'So we need to have different resilience programmes for each part of the country,' Enedis said. Advertisement Flagship projects in Indre-et-Loire and Ardèche, meanwhile, are seeing electricity cables buried underground to prevent outages caused by winds, snow and storms, which can lead to outages – due, for example, to branches or trees falling on to power lines. Today, some 98.4 percent of new medium-voltage lines are buried – the higher cost of maintenance and repairs more than covered by the reduction in the number of outages caused by extreme weather.
Local France
4 days ago
- Local France
Water shortages in French Alps hit mountain lodges and hiking season
"Everything has dried up," said Noemie Dagan, who looks after the Selle refuge, located at an altitude of 2,673 meters (8,769 feet) in the Ecrins, a mountain range overtowered by two majestic peaks. The snowfield that usually supplies water to her 60-bed chalet already "looks a bit like what we would expect at the end of July or early August", she said. "We are nearly a month early in terms of the snow's melting." The mountain refuge, lacking a water tank, relies on water streaming down from the mountain. If it runs out it, the shelter will have to close. Advertisement This happened in mid-August 2023, and could happen again. Dagan's backup solutions to avoid such a scenario include plastic pipes a kilometre long - installed with difficulty - to collect water from a nearby glacier close to the Pic de la Grave. READ ALSO : Everything you need to know about staying in a French mountain refuge✎ But the slopes along which the pipe was laid are steep, unstable and vulnerable to increasingly violent storms ravaging the range. In the 15 years that she has worked in the sector, Dagan has witnessed "a metamorphosis" of the mountains and glaciers that are "our watertowers", she said. "We are basically the sentinels who have seen what is coming." Thomas Boillot, a local mountain guide, said the possibility one day of seeing water supply issues affecting the mountain shelters had "never even crossed our minds". But such cases have increased "and there will likely be more," he added. READ ALSO : EXPLAINED: How to check water restrictions in your area of France✎ Some snowfields once considered eternal now melt in the summer, precipitation has become scarcer, and glaciers change shape as they melt - factors that combine to disrupt the water supply for chalets. Water used to arrive "through gravity" from snow and ice reserves higher up, but it is going to have to be pumped from below in the future, he said. Scientists say that the impact of climate change is nearly twice as severe in the Alps as it is globally, warning that only remnants of today's glaciers are likely to exist by 2100 - if they haven't disappeared altogether by then. Advertisement This year's weather is also dangerous for the 1,400 glaciers in neighbouring Switzerland, where the authorities report that accumulated snow and ice have melted five to six weeks before the usual time. "Brutal" is the term Xavier Cailhol, an environmental science PhD student and mountain guide, used to describe the impact of the heatwave that he saw on a recent trip to the massif of the Mont Blanc, western Europe's highest mountain. "I started ski-touring on Mont Blanc in June with 40 centimetres of powder snow. I ended up on glaciers that were completely bare, even as high up as the Midi Peak, at 3,700 meters altitude," he said. A cover of snow helps to protect the ice underneath by reflecting sunlight, he noted. "Above 3,200 meters, it's drier than anything we've seen before," he said. "It's quite concerning for the rest of the summer." A case in point is the accelerated melting of the Bossons Glacier, a massive ice tongue overlooking the valley before Chamonix. It began with a "patch of gravel" which became larger, and "in fact is speeding up the melting at that location" because its dark colour absorbs more heat. The melting of the Bossons Glacier is clearly visible from Chamonix, making it a constant reminder of what is happening to glaciers everywhere. "It's a symbol," said Cailhol.
Local France
6 days ago
- Local France
In numbers: Are summers in France really getting hotter?
Picture your childhood, and you'll often see it bathed in sunshine - especially if you were lucky enough to have holidays in the south of France as a youngster. But in the 21st century discussion of sunny weather is just as likely to be accompanied by heatwave alerts and warnings of the risk to health. So is it the weather that has changed, or how we respond to it? Some things are hard to measure, but fortunately temperature isn't one of them. France has kept detailed national temperature records since 1900, which gives us a decent data to play with, and overall we can see that France is getting hotter. The temperatures Météo France, the French national weather forecaster, says : "Since 1900, the average temperature in France has warmed by 1.7C. "Every decade since 1970 has been warmer than the previous one. Over the last ten years, from 2011 to 2020, the rise has been +0.6C, the highest increase observed between two decades in France since 1900." Overall, 2022 was the hottest year on record in France, with a record 33 days meeting officially defined heatwave conditions: five in June and 14 in both July and August. Advertisement The average covers the entire year, but the data also shows that summers (which Météo France counts as running from June 1st to August 31st) are also getting hotter. The hottest summers recorded since 1900 are all recent ones - 2003, 2022, 2018, 2023 and 2019. The below chart shows the average summer temperature for the years 1900 to 2024 compared to the overall average for the century, with the summers below average in blue and those above average in red - the red bars are heavily clustered around the most recent years. Average summer temperatures from 1900 to 2024 compared to the average - with below average in blue and above average in red. Graphic: Meteo France But the summer isn't just about the average temperature, it's also about heatwaves. A heatwave is defined by Météo France as a period of several days when the temperature is above average for the region - that's the reason that the same temperature can be a 'heatwave' in one part of France, but not in another - it's about what is considered normal for that area. And the French data shows that heatwaves are becoming a lot more common. Between 1947 and 2024, Météo-France recorded 49 heatwaves - between 1947 and 1957, four heatwaves were recorded. This figure has increased five-fold over the last 10 years and between 2014 to 2024, 20 heatwaves were recorded. The heatwaves themselves are also happening earlier in the summer , and are recording higher temperatures - France's national record for the hottest day was set in 2019 (in Hérault which recorded 46C in the shade). That same year multiple local records were broken, including in Paris which recorded 42.6C. "We have observed, in a very well-documented manner, that heatwaves are occurring earlier and earlier, lasting longer and longer, and becoming more intense," Météo-France forecaster François Gourand told Franceinfo . Weather alerts But while it's beyond any reasonable doubt that France's summers are indeed getting hotter, there has also been a change in weather forecasting and the response. The impetus for this in France was the summer of 2003 - when a particularly severe and long-lasting heatwave led to the deaths of 15,000 people, many of them elderly people who died alone at home. This brought people face to face with the hard fact that heatwaves are not simply uncomfortable - they can be fatal. Advertisement Stung into action, local and national government began seriously improving their heatwave plans - now every authority has plans to protect the vulnerable in hot weather, including 'cool rooms' open to the public and a register of people who might be at risk in a heatwave, who can request check-ups. In urban areas, leaders got serious about installing drinking water points, cool air misters and access to shady and air conditioned spaces. Since 2003 there have been heatwaves that have lasted longer and have recorded higher temperatures - but that huge death toll has never been repeated, thanks in large part to the warnings and protective measures deployed. Heatwaves do still kill though - in 2023 (France's fourth hottest summer on record) 400 people died during in a two-week heatwave in August. Overall 5,000 excess deaths were recorded between June 1st and September 15th 2023, of which 1,500 were attributed to the heat. READ ALSO : Explained: How dangerous are French heatwaves?✎ Météo France has also developed its traffic light weather warning system so that heatwave risks are graded from green (no risk) through yellow and orange to red, the highest alert level which means a possible danger to life . Advertisement When a red alert is issued certain emergency plans swing into place and local authorities also get extra powers to do things like cancel large public events if they decide it is necessary. Heatwaves don't just make it hot though - they also increase the risk of drought and wildfire. Since 2022 - France's worst year on record for wildfires when 72,000 hectares (an area seven times the size of Paris) burned - Météo France also issues a daily wildfire risk map during the summer, in which places are graded based on their risk. As with the weather map, once a red alert is in place local authorities get the power to do things like close forests and national parks or cancel fireworks displays. READ ALSO : Is France ready for a summer of increasingly severe wildfires?✎ You can expect widespread news coverage when red warnings for either heatwave or wildfires are issued. So yes, you're likely to see more media coverage around the negative effects of heat - but French summers are definitely getting hotter.
