Too Hot: Extreme Heat Resources

More than 100 million people across the United States are facing extreme temperatures this week with a heat dome across the Northeast.

The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania offers timely research and policy guidance for leaders at the frontlines of these more frequent extreme heat events.

Publications

Rethinking Extreme Heat and Urban Resilience through Scales Connectivity
Extreme heat is becoming more frequent, intense, and synchronized across cities. Learn how climate science can guide proactive resource allocation, strengthen urban resilience, and better protect vulnerable communities.

Mobile Energy Storage: Flexibility for the Energy Transition
What if batteries could move to where the grid needs them most? This research shows how mobile energy storage can boost profits, ease congestion, and accelerate renewables—if policy evolves to unlock geospatial flexibility.

Heat Stress and Urban Resilience: Alternative Cooling Strategies to Combat Extreme Heat in the Urban Environment
As heat intensifies in cities, this digest argues that solar-powered open-air cooling shelters can play a critical role in a layered urban cooling strategy—providing resilient, low-energy relief that complements cooling centers and remains operational during power outages.

Measuring What Matters: Rethinking Energy Insecurity Metrics
A quarter of American households experience energy insecurity, forcing trade-offs between utility bills and other essentials. This digest discusses existing energy insecurity metrics and proposes a new holistic framework for measuring this hardship.

Cooling People, Not Spaces: Surmounting the Risks of Air-Conditioning Over-Reliance
The growing global demand for air conditioning is exacerbating carbon emissions. This trend will intensify unless alternative solutions are sought and massively adopted. Solutions already exist and new ones are emerging, but face barriers including technology, building design, education, finance, and policy.

Evaluating K-12 Public School District Sustainability Plans for Justice and Equity
Sustainability and climate plans for public K-12 school districts have the potential to address infrastructural gaps that produce outdated, unhealthy, and unsafe school facilities. This project takes a deeper look at several plans across the nation.

Commentary

Five Ways to Power Down
Energy conservation requires effort, especially during extreme weather events. Here are a few ways you can conserve energy and money while reducing emissions.

When the Last Mile Turns Hot: Delivery Drivers in a Warming Climate
An economic sociologist discusses the growing heat dangers facing last-mile delivery drivers, and why federal protections remain stalled.

Rethinking Air Conditioning in a Hotter World
Two experts discuss the challenge of keeping billions of people cool while minimizing electrical grid and climate impacts.

How Inequity Across the U.S. Has Unjustly Worsened the Impacts of Extreme Heat
Historical discriminatory policies in Philadelphia and cities across the nation have placed minority and low-income communities at a higher risk of being harmed by extreme heat. Local governments must invest in these communities to work towards a more just society.

Energy Inequity in Low-Income Housing
Many federal initiatives have attempted to improve the efficiency and sustainability of America’s housing, but such policies often miss low-income households, who don’t always have the resources needed to take advantage of these programs.