“Extreme heat hits every system at once”: WEF warns of emerging critical infrastructure threat
"The infrastructure people and economies rely on was designed for a climate that no longer exists."
Soaring global temperatures are threatening critical infrastructure by putting interconnected systems under extreme pressure, the World Economic Forum has warned.
Power grids, hospitals, water networks, transport and data centers are among the systems facing growing stress as global temperatures rise.
But the WEF said that the connections between these systems create an additional vulnerability, allowing problems in one area to cascade into others.
“Extreme heat hits every system at once,” wrote WEF executives Pim Valdre and Joy Shumake-Guillemot. “As demand for cooling, water and electricity peaks, heat weakens the networks that supply them.”
This means supply can fall at precisely the moment demand surges, exposing what the WEF described as a “core vulnerability: system interdependence.”
Simmering threats
Recent heatwaves have demonstrated the pressure heaped on critical systems.
During a historic European period of high temperatures in June 2026, NHS hospitals in England declared critical incidents as equipment failed under extreme heat.
Weeks earlier, 47°C temperatures overwhelmed the electricity grid in northern India, leaving millions facing power cuts.
US grids hit record peaks in July, triggering emergency federal orders to shift data centers onto backup power to preserve household electricity supplies.
“It would be easy to read these as separate emergencies,” the WEF said. “They are not.”
Instead, the organization said they were early signs of an underlying change: infrastructure was built to operate under environmental conditions that are changing.
“The infrastructure people and economies rely on was designed for a climate that no longer exists,” the WEF said, adding that the resulting gap between design and reality was straining economies and communities.
So hot right now
The past 11 years were the hottest on record, while further warming through at least 2050 is locked in by past emissions, according to the WEF.
It argued that the ability of critical infrastructure to withstand that heat will depend on how effectively it can be prepared and retrofitted.
The pressure can occur on both sides of critical systems simultaneously.
During last summer's heatwaves, electricity demand in Hungary increased by 23% just as low water levels in the Danube forced output reductions at the country's main nuclear plant.
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Operators also lack visibility into the condition of infrastructure outside their own systems.
“Hospitals, data centers and rail operators know their operational limits and needs during heatwaves, but not those of the grid, transportation and water systems they rely on,” the WEF said.
It argued that heat resilience therefore requires planning across connected infrastructure rather than within individual systems.
Relieving systemic stress
The WEF called for operators to build a shared picture of infrastructure stress by combining weather forecasts with information about grid load, water availability, public and private demand and the dependencies connecting these systems.
Operators can currently forecast weather but cannot predict when the systems they depend on will fail, it said.
A shared view could indicate when demand is likely to surge, supply tighten and non-essential consumption needs to be reduced or backup systems activated.
The organization also called for stronger governance around extreme heat.
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Most countries have no single body responsible for deciding how resources, including power, water, and cooling, should be allocated when a heatwave pushes demand towards its limits, according to the WEF.
Responsibilities are instead distributed across different organizations, while incentives for coordination can be absent.
The WEF proposed extending the principle of heat-health early warning systems to other sectors, allowing agreed thresholds to trigger coordinated measures, including reduced non-essential demand, worker protections, and changes to transport and health services.
Securing points of fragility
The organization also argued that investment should be directed towards points where individual failures could have the greatest cascading effects.
These weaknesses can be difficult to address because responsibility for funding them may not belong to a single owner.
A data center or private hospital, for instance, can protect its own facility but cannot independently secure the electricity grid and water systems it relies on.
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The WEF said: “On-site backup can keep it running temporarily, but not prevent wider blackouts or water shortages that ultimately cut it off.:
Extreme heat should therefore be treated as a permanent operating condition and ongoing systemic risk rather than a recurring shock.
“Keeping power on, water running and essential services open through it is becoming a precondition for functioning societies and competitive economies,” officials concluded.
