Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh

Whilst walk­ing through the streets of Barcelona re­cent­ly, I sud­den­ly be­gan to feel light­head­ed and con­fused. A se­vere throb­bing headache came on with­out warn­ing. My skin felt as though it were on fire, yet I was not sweat­ing. At first, I won­dered whether I had en­joyed one glass too many of Ca­va or the tapas I had eat­en sim­ply dis­agreed with me. Then it dawned on me. My body was re­act­ing to the in­tense heat and hu­mid­i­ty. I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the clas­sic warn­ing signs of an im­pend­ing heat stroke.

The day be­fore, Barcelona had record­ed a max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture of 40.5°C—its high­est tem­per­a­ture in 112 years of record-keep­ing. Spain’s Mor­tal­i­ty Mon­i­tor­ing Sys­tem (Mo­Mo) re­port­ed 1,029 deaths at­trib­ut­able to high tem­per­a­tures dur­ing June 2026 alone.

The World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­gan­i­sa­tion has warned that such heat­waves will be­come the “new nor­mal.” It has urged gov­ern­ments world­wide to take ac­tion to ad­dress this threat.

Eu­ro­pean coun­tries, which have been suf­fer­ing ca­su­al­ties from heat­waves, have be­gun a new dri­ve to em­brace so­lar-pow­ered air con­di­tion­ing and dis­trict cool­ing sys­tems.

So­lar pan­els not on­ly pro­vide pow­er for air con­di­tion­ing units, re­duc­ing the strain on the coun­try’s elec­tri­cal grid, but al­so re­flect heat from build­ings, keep­ing them cool­er.

Crit­ics point out that even so­lar-pow­ered air con­di­tion­ing con­tributes to the ur­ban heat is­land ef­fect by ex­pelling heat out­doors, while re­frig­er­ants can al­so have en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts. This is one rea­son why many cities are in­vest­ing in dis­trict cool­ing sys­tems.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, I learnt that Barcelona has de­vel­oped one of South­ern Eu­rope’s largest dis­trict ther­mal en­er­gy sys­tems and is con­sid­er­ing ex­pand­ing it. In­stead of every build­ing re­ly­ing on its own air con­di­tion­ing units, a cen­tral fa­cil­i­ty pro­duces chilled wa­ter that is dis­trib­uted through an un­der­ground net­work of in­su­lat­ed pipes. The sys­tem con­sists of four par­al­lel pipelines—two car­ry­ing hot wa­ter and two car­ry­ing cold wa­ter—con­nect­ing three pro­duc­tion plants, one of which is cooled us­ing sea­wa­ter. The net­work pro­vides ef­fi­cient heat­ing and cool­ing to of­fices, homes and pub­lic build­ings, while con­sum­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly less en­er­gy than thou­sands of in­di­vid­ual sys­tems.

France has adopt­ed sim­i­lar in­no­va­tions. In Mar­seille, a 4.4-kilo­me­tre sea­wa­ter en­er­gy net­work sup­plies build­ings with heat­ing, cool­ing and hot wa­ter. Mean­while, the Fraîcheur de Paris net­work us­es more than 120 kilo­me­tres of un­der­ground pipes to cir­cu­late chilled wa­ter de­rived from the Riv­er Seine, cool­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 850 build­ings, in­clud­ing the Lou­vre Mu­se­um, hos­pi­tals, schools and of­fices. This has re­duced elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion by 35 per cent, re­frig­er­ant emis­sions by 90 per cent, chem­i­cal use by 80 per cent and car­bon diox­ide emis­sions by 50 per cent.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, our cli­mate is be­com­ing hot­ter. Our high­est of­fi­cial­ly record­ed tem­per­a­ture was 36.5°C on Sep­tem­ber 25, 1990, but ris­ing hu­mid­i­ty means that the heat in­dex—the tem­per­a­ture the hu­man body ac­tu­al­ly ex­pe­ri­ences—can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er.

In Au­gust 2023, the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice is­sued a 15-day heat­wave alert. De­spite pub­lic health warn­ings, re­ports emerged of peo­ple faint­ing.

The agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor al­so suf­fered. Farm­ers grow­ing toma­toes, me­l­on­gene, hot and sea­son­ing pep­pers, cu­cum­bers, wa­ter­mel­on, wa­ter­cress and sal­ad greens ap­pealed for emer­gency wa­ter sup­plies, af­ter nat­ur­al wa­ter sources dried up and ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture proved in­ad­e­quate to trans­port wa­ter to their fields.

Those liv­ing in in­dus­tri­alised and ur­banised ar­eas face a greater threat from high am­bi­ent tem­per­a­tures, as do the el­der­ly, peo­ple with chron­ic ill­ness­es, out­door work­ers and young chil­dren.

The Gov­ern­ment should be­gin plan­ning now for a fu­ture where ex­treme heat is no longer ex­cep­tion­al but ex­pect­ed.

The Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion should strength­en poli­cies by lim­it­ing ex­ces­sive site cov­er­age and re­quir­ing greater preser­va­tion of veg­e­ta­tion. Trees and green spaces not on­ly re­duce tem­per­a­tures through shade and evap­o­tran­spi­ra­tion but al­so im­prove drainage and help re­duce flood­ing.

Gov­ern­ment should al­so ex­plore the fea­si­bil­i­ty of dis­trict cool­ing sys­tems in coastal ur­ban cen­tres such as Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do, where ac­cess to sea­wa­ter may pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties sim­i­lar to those suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed in Barcelona and Mar­seille.

Home­own­ers and busi­ness­es should be en­cour­aged, through tax in­cen­tives and low-in­ter­est loans, to in­stall so­lar-pow­ered air con­di­tion­ing which, de­spite its draw­backs, re­duces pres­sure on the elec­tric­i­ty grid and low­ers en­er­gy costs com­pared with con­ven­tion­al units.

T&T should al­so seek tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance and cli­mate fi­nanc­ing from Eu­ro­pean na­tions that have al­ready pi­o­neered these tech­nolo­gies.

Cli­mate change is no longer a dis­tant threat. It is al­ready af­fect­ing our health, agri­cul­ture, econ­o­my and qual­i­ty of life. Eu­rope has demon­strat­ed prac­ti­cal, sus­tain­able ways to keep cities cool. We should learn from those suc­cess­es and in­vest now in a cool­er, health­i­er and more re­silient fu­ture.