Sam Fenwick
speaker
941 appearances
9 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 3 Aug
Sam Fenwick’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 4.
Appearances
In northern Europe, it's more like one in ten or even fewer.
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And yet research published in the journal Nature Medicine estimated that heat killed more than 60,000 people across Europe in 2024.
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This summer, France alone has had four heat waves since May.
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So a lot of people went out and bought air conditioners.
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And behind every one of those machines is a chain.
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Four links.
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The factory in southern China that makes the unit, the shop that runs out of them, the power station that provides the energy when you switch them on, and the street outside your window which gets hotter while you, thanks to the aircon, get cooler.
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We're going to follow the money through all four and find out who's making money off Europe's summer heatwave.
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So let's start with the box itself.
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Most of Europe's air conditioning units are made in China, and one company is way out in front, even if you've probably never heard of them.
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Medea is one of China's biggest manufacturers of home appliances.
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And Tobias Strobel is head of innovation for Europe, responsible for air conditioning units, heat pumps and battery systems.
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He's speaking to us from the company's European Research Centre in Stuttgart, Germany.
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For years, most Europeans wouldn't bother buying an air conditioning unit.
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You know, the kind, the box bolted to the outside of the wall, the unit on the wall inside and a pipe running between them.
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An engineer, a ladder and a drill.
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And that was partly because of the cost.
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So he's not cheap, about €3,000 or US$3,500 all in.
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So Tobias and his team came up with something else, a unit that splits in two and hooks over a window ledge.
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No drilling, no builder, no asking the neighbours.
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Showing 21–40 of 941 · page 2 of 48
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