{"id":1165802,"date":"2026-08-24T01:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T01:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1165802\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T01:30:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T01:30:00","slug":"how-europes-heatwaves-are-hurting-the-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1165802\/","title":{"rendered":"How Europe’s heatwaves are hurting the economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rachel Mealey:<\/strong> As Europe suffers through extreme heat and massive wildfires, droughts are also drying up the continent’s rivers and hitting the economy. One new analysis estimates the brutally hot summer is set to cost the EU economy nearly 200 billion euros, as Alison Xiao reports.<\/p>\n

Alison Xiao:<\/strong> At the Orlik Dam in the Czech Republic, cranes have been lifting boats out of the reservoir this month.<\/p>\n

Worker:<\/strong> We’re hauling the boats out and trying to move them because the water level is dropping and it’s likely to continue to do so. So we have no other choice.<\/p>\n

Alison Xiao:<\/strong> It’s not just pleasure crafts that aren’t able to sail. Large freight vessels have been severely disrupted, meaning trucks have had to take over transporting critical coal, chemical and grains in Germany. Associate Professor Rommert Dekker is a logistics expert at Erasmus University in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

Rommert Dekker:<\/strong> Instead of one barge, you may need 200 trucks. That transport is way more costly than the barge transport. And then the point is the production, which is reduced since they cannot be supplied.<\/p>\n

Alison Xiao:<\/strong> From the Rhine to the Danube to the Po, Europe’s critical waterways are falling to record lows. At one point on the Rhine, where it passes through Cologne in Germany, the river gauge sank earlier this month to its lowest reading since 1816. At one of the river’s shallowest stretches, 100 kilometres from Cologne, the water level fell to just 6 centimetres two weeks ago. Economist Ernst Hobma.<\/p>\n

Ernst Hobma:<\/strong> Some of the smaller channels are already closed for shipping, simply because there’s too little water. So ships can’t pass through anymore. They’ve become unnavigable.<\/p>\n

Alison Xiao:<\/strong> Mr Hobmafrom Triodos Bank in the Netherlands co-authored a new analysis this month, estimating that this year’s brutally hot summer is on track to cost the EU economy 180 billion euros, around 300 billion Australian dollars.<\/p>\n

Ernst Hobma:<\/strong> The biggest, but also the most complex channel is actually labour productivity. So people get much less work done when it’s extremely hot. That’s most visible for people who work outside. All in all, we get for the EU to an estimate of one percentage point GDP loss.<\/p>\n

Alison Xiao:<\/strong> Water from the rivers is also critical for crops, and there are fears poor harvests caused by the drought will push food prices higher.<\/p>\n

Ernst Hobma:<\/strong> We just know that yields will be lower if you experience extreme heat and drought, like we’re doing in Europe today. So that also will mean low yields going forward, probably pushing up food inflation and depressing GDP a little bit.<\/p>\n

Alison Xiao:<\/strong> The continent’s energy sector is also under stress. Low water levels in the Danube have forced sharp restrictions at Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant, where the river provides cold water needed for its reactors. There have also been power plants shut down in other countries, including France and Romania. More hot and dry conditions are forecast for September, according to the European Commission, with the risk of heatwaves continuing.<\/p>\n

Rachel Mealey:<\/strong> Alison Xiao.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rachel Mealey: As Europe suffers through extreme heat and massive wildfires, droughts are also drying up the continent’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1165803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2311,1700,728,2000,299,5187,1984,1871,476,3796,37096,6648],"class_list":["post-1165802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-climate-change","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-global-warming","tag-heat","tag-inflation","tag-podcast","tag-rivers","tag-supply-chains"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117147902095900153","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1165803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}