France was built to keep warm – now it must learn how to stay cool

France is being forced to rethink how it keeps cool during the summer after a string of heatwaves exposed just how ill-prepared many homes and cities are for rising temperatures.

For generations, French buildings were designed to keep the cold out and warmth in, but as summers become hotter and periods of extreme heat last longer, that design is failing for the people living inside them.

The problem is particularly bad in Paris, where thousands of residents live on the top floors of older apartment buildings, right underneath the famous zinc rooftops.

Meera recently bought a sixth-floor apartment directly under one of those roofs. Despite having the property insulated, she says it’s become unbearably hot this summer.

"It was really intense," she said. "I used to live in a third-floor apartment, but I bought the sixth floor just under the zinc roof. I never thought that we’d have heatwaves as intense, and that went on for so many days."

She's now considering installing air conditioning, something she never imagined she'd need in Paris.

"I've never considered air conditioning, but I am for the first time in my life," she says. "I think it’s going to be a necessity to stay in this apartment."

Air conditioning is still much less common in French homes than in many other countries.

For years, it was widely seen as an unnecessary luxury, partly because it'd be used for only a handful of days each summer and partly because of concerns about its cost and environmental impact.

But that attitude is quickly changing.

Climate scientist and IPCC lead author François Gemenne tells CGTN that repeated heatwaves are turning aircon from a luxury into a necessity.

"For years, those units were not considered as necessary in France," he says. "That was a kind of superfluous luxury equipment that you’d use two or three days a year."

But Gemenne warns that simply installing more air conditioning units won’t solve the bigger problem.

He says that France will also need to rethink how it renovates buildings, designs public spaces and organises daily life during periods of extreme heat.

"Regarding the buildings, regarding the city itself, we'll need to have more trees. We'll need to have more public swimming pools as well," he tells CGTN.

"Some of the work schedules will need to be adapted, and potentially one can even ask, is it a good idea to have end-of-the-year exams in June at school, which is one of the hottest months of the year?"

The problem goes far beyond hot and stuffy homes, with much of modern France built for a climate that’s disappearing.

"The city was conceived for a climate that no longer exists," Gemenne says.

Adapting to this new reality will require huge investment, something both national and local governments are struggling to fund.

"The difficulty, usually, is that the government has no money, the city has no money, and therefore we always run the risk of taking emergency measures, whereas what we need would be long-term measures to adapt," he tells CGTN.

But for residents like Meera, the immediate worry is how to make it through the next heatwave.

For France, the much bigger question is how quickly it can adapt to summers that are no longer seen as exceptional.