Cities Are Cooking. Solar Is the Cold Front.

In late June, southern England baked through highs above 30 °C in parts of London and beyond. Montreal broke its long-standing June record, hitting 35.1 °C. Phoenix? Triple-digit days became the norm, with highs soaring past 110 °F.

Here’s the thing: it’s not just hotter than it used to be. It’s hotter where most people actually live. And cities, by design, make it worse.

The “urban heat island” effect is a design flaw: black rooftops, asphalt and concrete all trap heat, retain it overnight, and turn cities into giant ovens. And who suffers the most? The elderly, low-income populations, renters, anyone in buildings without insulation or A/C, and everyone whose job doesn’t come with air-con and a laptop.

Heat is officially a frontline equity issue.

And this is where solar comes in, not just as a clean energy source, but as literal cooling infrastructure.

When you put solar on rooftops, you don’t just generate electricity. You shade the building. You lower rooftop temps. You cut the heat bleeding into the street. Panels can cool roofs by up to 5°C, which is enough to shave degrees off an entire neighbourhood. Add solar carports over tarmac, solar canopies at schools and shopping centres, and cooling compounds.

It’s like adding trees, only faster. And it pays for itself.

The Global Solar Council has rightly called for solar and storage to anchor modern cooling systems. I want to add to that conversation today by underscoring the cooling power of shade itself: a panel on your roof doesn’t just run your A/C, it stops your house from turning into an oven in the first place.

Governments will talk about “urban greening,” which is fantastic but also…slow. It takes years for a tree to shade a house. A solar system goes in over a weekend and starts generating power, savings, and shade immediately. Cities that treat rooftop and carport solar as critical heat-resilience infrastructure (rather than a nice-to-have) are going to win on comfort, health, and energy cost.

So why aren’t more cities doing it? Because most cities still act like they’re doing you a favour by allowing solar at all. Permitting is slow, expensive, and often intentionally painful. In places like California, utilities and local governments are still trying to tax and gatekeep solar, despite the fact that we’re barrelling into a world where not having it is a public health risk.

And let’s be clear: this isn’t just an American problem. In the UK, there’s been little effort to integrate solar into the housing stock at scale, despite multiple record-breaking summers. Our new builds still go up without rooftop solar as standard. That’s a missed opportunity the size of the housing market.

Imagine a city that mandated solar canopies over every schoolyard, council building, or parking lot. Imagine building codes that required solar-ready roofs. Not because of carbon targets or greenwashy press releases but because you want your elderly citizens to stop dying in July.

The maths work. The economics work. The cooling effect is real. And the technology is the cheapest source of electricity in human history.

Solar isn’t just about net zero or grid savings or sticking it to fossil fuel companies anymore.

Solar keeps your city from becoming unlivable. Frankly, that should be enough.