Helena Horton

speaker

303 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 20 Aug

Helena Horton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Today in Focus · Heatwave hell: are soaring temperatures the new normal? – The Latest · 25 May 2026 podcast

I wouldn't say that air conditioning itself is bad for the environment always.

So the government is trying to get us to invest in heat pumps for our homes.

You can actually buy heat pumps that both heat and cool your house.

They have the same technology in them as a fridge.

And at the moment, the grants only really apply to the ones that heat your home.

I think that they should be applying to the ones that cool your home too.

And that the government should be funding retrofitting of these in old people's homes and potentially also schools.

But you're right.

I mean, it does put pressure on the grid.

We haven't switched over to renewable energy for all of our electricity yet.

We actually see in America that areas where they have heat waves, the grid often have blackouts or brownouts, they call it, because there's too much demand on the grid due to the amount of people turning on their air con.

Actually, they've managed to sort that out in some states with solar power, because obviously when it's hot and sunny, you have more solar power.

So, yeah, so I guess we need more renewables and it'd be great if we could have those heat pumps installed that both heat and cool our homes.

Well, the Met Office do think we are likely to have a hot summer because we normally reach our peak temperatures at the end of July, start of August.

So it probably will be potentially hotter than this, at least as hot as this at that time of year.

It's predicted to be a super El Nino at the end of the year, starting in summer and going on right into next year.

So actually, the full effect, if it does come to pass, it's about 60% last time I checked.

if it does come to pass, will be in actually summer of 2027.

So next summer, if the El Niño hits, we're likely to have very hot summer next year.

But this year it will start to have effect.

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