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By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital

Hello,

Europe is struggling with wildfires and storms this week which have devastated lands and killed people across Italy, Greece and Spain.

Large areas of the Mediterranean have been sweltering under an intense summer heat wave causing deadly blazes across the region.

Firefighters have been battling to put out wildfires from Portugal to Sicily to Algeria. In Algeria, at least 34 people have died. In Croatia, flames came within 12 km (7.5 miles) of the medieval town of Dubrovnik late on Tuesday.

Firefighters and volunteers try to extinguish a wildfire burning in the village of Vati, on the island of Rhodes, Greece, July 26, 2023. REUTERS/Nicolas Economou

Italy’s southern island of Sicily has been devastated by wildfires that have killed three elderly people, its regional president said, as a heatwave and severe storms further north took a heavy toll.

The charred bodies of a couple in their 70s were found in their burnt-out home on the outskirts of Palermo, the island’s capital, according to Italian media reports.

Another woman in her late 80s died in Palermo province after an ambulance was unable to reach her home due to fires.

In an overnight message on Facebook, Sicilian President Renato Schifani said “scorching heat and unprecedented devastating fires” had turned Tuesday into “one of the most difficult days in decades”.

While Italy’s south is battling with wildfires, the north of the country is reeling from severe storms that killed two people, including a 16-year-old girl scout crushed by a falling tree on Tuesday.

Wildfires that have been supercharged by strong winds and temperatures exceeding 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) killed two people in central Greece on Wednesday and forced a new wave of evacuations.

In the last 24 hours alone, 61 wildfires erupted across Greece, the fire brigade said. Officials ordered the evacuation of several communities in the hard-hit area of Magnesia, a coastal area north of Athens.

The body of a 45-year-old shepherd was found in a rural area on Wednesday evening, the fire brigade said. Earlier, authorities had found the body of a woman, state TV ERT said. Both deaths were attributed to the fires.

Dozens of firefighters, assisted by 15 fire engines, were battling the flames as they threatened the industrial zone of the city of Volos. Firefighters circled the zone as they tried to protect it, a Reuters witness said.

Standing outside the blackened shell of what used to be his restaurant, Dimitris Hajifotis lamented a livelihood lost to wildfires raging on the Greek island of Rhodes this week.

“My life has now stopped,” he said. “Everything is taken by the fire.”

Firefighters have “stabilized” a wildfire that ravaged 400 hectares of woodland in the center of the Spanish island of Gran Canaria, local emergency services chief Federico Grillo said on Thursday.

Authorities declared the wildfire stable at 00.42 a.m. local time (2342 GMT) after it had forced the evacuation of hundreds of villagers from their homes as well as dozens of children from a camping site near a mountain top.

A flooded area is pictured near the historic Taj Mahal as the Yamuna river overflows following heavy rains, in Agra, India July 18, 2023. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

Maja Darlington, campaigner at the independent environmental campaigning organization Greenpeace UK, shares her thoughts on Shell’s profits amid the devastating heat waves across Europe and elsewhere: 

“While millions attempt to rebuild their lives after months of extreme weather wreaked havoc from Rhodes to Rajasthan, Shell is upping oil and gas production, slashing investment in renewables and posting billions of dollars in profits. They’re partying like there’s no tomorrow and ordinary people around the world are being forced to pick up the tab.

“It is blazingly clear that global leadership is needed to end this fossil fuel free-for-all, but instead the UK government is flip-flopping on its climate commitments and further enriching the oil giants with new fossil fuel developments.

“Tens of thousands have been forced to flee their homes by wildfires which continue to rage across Greece this week, sparked by the Cerberus heatwave which saw temperatures in Southern Europe of almost 50C. 

“In light of the soaring costs of loss and damage from extreme weather, which is estimated to reach between $290 and $580 billion a year by 2050, Greenpeace is calling for Shell and other oil giants to be made to pay for the climate loss and damage they have caused by paying into the Loss and Damage fund agreed at COP27. 

“It’s time for the government to find its backbone and force Shell and the rest of the industry to stop drilling and start paying for the damage they are already causing around the world.”

U.S. regulators on Thursday will vote on proposals to speed up the connection of new energy projects to the electric grid, which could ease a growing backlog of requests from renewable energy developers and deliver more green energy to consumers.

Long waits for transmission interconnection have slowed efforts to ease wild pricing and tight power supply in some markets, and hobbled the deployment of big solar and wind projects that the Biden administration wants built to combat climate change.

Marine Scientist Angela Stevenson of GEOMAR picks flowering seagrass in Laboe, Germany July 10, 2023. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

Today’s spotlight shines a light on climate change solutions in Europe as citizen divers restore seagrass in the Baltic sea while a Swiss center treats birds adversely affected by extreme heat.

Just off the coast of Kiel in northern Germany, scuba divers use hand trowels to dig up emerald green seagrass shoots complete with roots from a dense underwater meadow, delicately shaking off the sediment before placing them in yellow bags.

Back on land, they store the shoots in large cooling boxes, before heading out the next day to a barren area further north to replant them in circles. One diver holds a line, and the other uses it to navigate the murky waters and swim around him.

They hope this painstaking work, part of a new project that trains local citizens to restore seagrass meadows in the Baltic Sea, can help tackle climate change.

Sparrow chicks fell off their nest during a heatwave were given to the Centre Ornithologique de Readaptation in Genthod near Geneva, Switzerland, July 25, 2023. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

Sparrows and swifts have arrived in droves at a Swiss center treating distressed birds after soaring temperatures caused them to dehydrate, with chicks even leaping from their nests in a desperate attempt to evade the blistering heat.

The Centre Ornithologique de Réadaptation on the outskirts of Geneva admitted around 30 birds a day, many with heat-related ailments, when temperatures soared past 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) this month.

“The world has already experienced the hottest day ever recorded. This is a wake-up call. To stop this record from being broken again and again, we need to act urgently, collectively, and comprehensively to accelerate the transition to a net zero economy.”

Kristian Rönn, CEO and co-founder of carbon accounting engine Normative

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