Europe and the U.K. are really, really hot right now. And many homes aren’t ready for it.

Buildings and homes in the area are old and ill-equipped to protect people from extreme heat spreading throughout the region. And that’s not only going to affect high-risk groups: The U.K. Health Security Agency said all populations are at risk of illness or death.

• Many homes, apartments and buildings in the U.K. and Europe lack air conditioning, and the price of those ACs is now rising as electricity prices soar. If you can get one at all, that is.
• Air and rail traffic may be disrupted, too, because services could lose power.
• "Our infrastructure is not built for the heat at all,” Hannah Cloke, a climate expert at Britain’s University of Reading, told CBC News.

Tech can play a role here. There’s a two-pronged approach to saving people from the effects of this crisis: on the physical front (creating cooler buildings) and on the social front (getting people to communicate and help one another).

• Heat pumps — which are becoming more mainstream — are a good way to cool things off.
• But what about the buildings themselves? Protocol climate reporter Michelle Ma spoke with ecoLocked, a startup that’s creating “carbon-negative” concrete. Homes built with that material would require less energy to cool or heat.
• Social media companies could also play a role. Facebook could check in on users affected by deadly heat waves as it has for people affected by hurricanes.

But maybe it should be a multi-pronged approach. EcoLocked CEO Mario Vaupel said green energy solutions like heat pumps shouldn't be the only way to address extreme heat. "These heat waves are getting more and more frequent, and I can’t really see a way around that. The question is, 'Where does the energy for the HVAC systems come from?'" he told Michelle.

— Sarah Roach