Summer Heat Waves and Grid Challenges

I'm Arch Manning. I'm Madison Skinner, I'mv Yovich. I'm Dloria Moore. W want to train like a Red Bowull athlete. Tell us your fitness goals this summer to enter the Red Bull Athlete challenge. You'll get to try each of our workouts for a chance to win an ultimate Red Bull experience. They you have what it takes The US labor market slowed last month, complicating the Fed's calculus for its next rate decision and Tesla sales are surging again Plus, how hot is it where you live right now? High temperatures this summer are going to challenge America's electric grid. There should be a lower risk for blackouts this summer, so that is the good news. But there is always a risk and there are just myriad problems kind of all over the place. It's Thursday, july second. I'm Alex Osolov for the Wall Street Journal This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today New data out from the Labor Department today show that the U S. economy added fifty seven thousand new jobs last month That's fewer than economists expected and a slowdown from the spring's hiring hot streak. Today's report also revises down the big job gains from May and April One interesting tidbit, the unemployment rate dipped to four point two percent. Fr May to June, we saw this very big drop in the labor force. It decreased by about seven hundred thousand, which is a surprise. When the unemployment rate goes down, it means that people are finding jobs. But in this case, it kind of went down for the wrong reasons, which is that there were fewer people available was. That's journal economics reporter Harriet Toreory. She says the share of people either working or looking for work, what's known as a labor force participation rate, fell to sixty one percent point a fiveal percent. Harriet says that reflects the fact that more baby boomers are retiring, and there's fewer immigrants working because of President Trump's crackdown on immigration. Also worth noting is where jobs were coming from. The healthcare and social assistance sector continued to add jobs as it has for several months. But Harriet says some experts were surprised that the leisure and hospitality sector lost more than sixty thousand jobs. They thought there might be more hiring because of the World Cup Some economists are saying this could also be a warning sign for the economy that actually hiring was not as strong for the World Cup as everybody was hoping for, and that maybe the lower income consumers who are really feeling the strain from inflation are starting to pull back and that perhaps demand this summer is not going to be necessarily that strong The softer June jobs report made investors think that the Fed is less likely to raise interest rates at its meeting later this month. They now put the odds of a July rate hike at about twenty percent. Before the report came out, that number was higher at thirty percent. Stock trading was mixed. The doO rose more than one percent and closed at its latest record, while the NSDAQ fell a bit less than one percent, and the S andP was flat. All three indexes closed up more than one point a half percent for the week. There's no trading tomorrow because of the july fourth holiday There's been a recovery at Tesla Sales at Elon Musk's car company jumped in the second quarter after months of sluggish sales The EV maker sold about twenty five percent more vehicles than it did in the same period last year Tesla's sales jump comes even though there's a wider downturn in the US EV market, with most other automakers reporting sharp sales declines for EV's. And Tesla's also in the middle of a pivot, trying to focus the company on robotoaxis and humanoid robots, but neither of those are currently for sale However, Tesla stock tumbled seven point a fiveal percent today, its biggest one day decline in a year It's still up more than three percent for the week Tesla will report its full earnings for the quarter later this month The CDC says that the death rate in the US fell last year to its lowest level on record. That translates to about six hundred and eighty nine deaths per one hundred thousand people The death rate declined across every age group and nearly every demographic group A CDC health scientist says the drop was because of a continuing decline in drug overdose deaths, as well as COVID nineteen not contributing to as many deaths Deathtss from the flu and pneumonia grew, and the category is now among the nation's top ten causes of death for the first time since twenty twenty Coming up, what's the biggest challenge for NATO's Secretary genereneral ahead of the Alliance's summit next week? The journal sat down with him and asked. We'll get into it after the break This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a fifty page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online makes sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check Responsse is set up required compatibility and availability varies eighteen plus Next week, leaders from NATO countries will meet in Turkey for a high stakes summit Our World cooverage Chief Gordon Fairclouff recently interviewed NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta about what to expect from that meeting which could be a test for the alliance. Anxieties about U. S. military drawdowns and President Trump's frustration with allies over the war in Iran threaten to overshadow the official agenda. This is an alliance of democracies It would be it would be a bad sign if we all come together, have vanilla meetings, basically not disagreeing at all. becausecause this is what the Chinese and the Russians do. this is what dictatorships do In our case, we are democracies. We are working together Europe has promised to spend tens of billions of new dollars on defense R Ruta told the journal that the key issue was now how to use the money coming in to accelerate weapons production and build stronger militaries. The Hague a year ago was about promises this summit when it comes to money, when it comes to the defence output, when it comes to support for Ukraine, it is about delivery. and the shift in mindset taking place now is that defence has to be core and center of what we are doing because this is about the first task. of a government, which is to keep our part of the world and our countries save one billion people living in NATor territory We'll leave a link to the full interview with Ruta in our show notes Sticking with Europe, the German government today unveiled a broad economic overhaul The country is trying to revive its economy, which has taken a hit from China's manufacturing might and President Trump's tariffs, as well as from problems at home, like red tape and high costs for labor and energy. The thirty four measures include tax and welfare benefit cuts, a relaxation of labor market rules, and steps to encourage investment in fast growing sectors The changes are a political gamble for a government that's been on the defensive since it took office a year ago Now it's trying to bring Germany's economy back to life and boost its own approval ratings before this fall's elections America's electric grid is not in peak condition. A lot of it is old, built in the post war boom of the fifties and sixties. It's in need of repair, which is expensive. And these days, there's new pressure on the grid, especially as the country gets into one of its most challenging seasons, summer I'm certainly feeling it sitting here in New York, where a heat wave prompted the electric company to send us all requests to limit our energy use this week And we can expect a whole lot more of the same in the next few months forecasts say it's going to be hot. And that could make for a tricky season for the electric grid. For more, I'm joined now by journal Energy repeporter, Jennifer Hiller Jennifer, let's start with the good news here. Youve reported that there are all these new energy sources that will help support our need for electricity. What are those sources? So we've got a lot more solar and battery that have come online in the last year and some natural gas plants as well. Almost sixty gigawatts, fifty eight and a hal. How much is that? That's a lot. That is about fifty something nuclear reactor worth of power. Of course, it's not all available all the time the way a nuclear reactor is. Solar and battery are available for certain hours during the day the risk of blackouts has actually been reduced a little bit from what it was a few years ago. Okay, that sounds good. Now let's get on to the harder parts. So temperatures are supposed to be over one hundred degrees along the Eastern Seaaboard this week. Can you explain why heat in particular poses a challenge for the electric grid Sure, I mean, first of all, just the hot weather can stress equipment. and then air conditioning demand goes up so much that you want to be generating enough power. And it sort of compresses the amount of wiggle room that you have on the grid when you have these very hot days One more complicating factor to add to the mix. We've heard a lot about the power needs of AI data centers lately. expected to affect the power grid's resiliency this summer? It could. I mean, they push up overall demand on the system We should have enough power under normal circumstances, but we are having a very hot summer and AI data centers behave in ways that are a little bit different. They can use power in a very kind of spiky way. and a few issues have popped up where there's been maybe a problem with a transmission line someomewhere, so you have had a few instances where you've had data centers suddenly exit. the power grid and then that can create a supply demand imbalance that the grid operators have to try to solve. What does this mean for customers? I mean, should people prepare for More disruptions or higher bills this summer? I would say higher bills for sure, electricity costs have been getting higher. and now we've got a very hot season on our hands. And so most people are going to be using more air conditioning that is going to drive bills higher That was WSJ Energy Reporter, Jennifer Hiller. Thanks Jennifer. Thank you Many Americans are going to be dealing with these super high temperatures for their july fourth festivities. But after the barbecues are done and the last fireworks have burst, we can retreat to our AC That tends not to be the case in Europe. In Italy, just over half of households have air conditioning. In France, it's about a quarter and in the UK, just five percent It's part of the reason Europe's recent heat wave felt so brutal. It is hot here on the streets of the Hague. It's almost suffocating. Right now here in Paris I live in the UK and I was born and raised in south of Italy. I know hot weather, I know summer thirty five degrees here feels like How Europeans have long shunned air conditioning. They think it's noisy, bad for the environment, a blight on their architectural heritage, and above all, unnecessary, since the summers have tended to be mild Except that's not true anymore Years of record breaking heat waves have placed strains on the continent's economy closing schools and businesses and rail lines. Plus, they're deadly. Europe's summer heat waves often claim tens of thousands of lives, far more than in the US. Journal reporter Matt Dton is in Paris, where last week it tpped one hundred and four degrees Fahrenheit. And he says these heat waves are making some Europeans rethink their approach to AC. Oers relelatively little air conditioning in schools. Hospitals nursing homes. ose are places where the lack of air conditioning is a big problem And with every heat wave, there's more and more people that want to install the systems. And because of local regulations around noise, architecture, energy consumption That is very difficult. A lot of cities in Europe are going to have to reconsider the restrictions they put. partarticularly as temperatures keep rising. I mean, unfortunately The weather is going to get hotter A lot of people feel like we shouldn't be adding to the problem by using more electricity to deal with the consequences of climate change, particularly in Europe. I think though that there's going to be a point where the heat is going to be so much that everybody's going to realize that a lot more people need it than have it now. For those in the US where ninety percent of households have AC, make sure you're staying cool this holiday weekend And that's what's news for this Thursday afternoon. We'll be dark tomorrow and the rest of the weekend for the fourth of July holiday Today's show was produced by Anthony Banscy and Alexis Moore with supervising producer Tolly Arbell Michael Laval wrote our themme Music. Aishha El Muslim is our development producer. Chris Linsley is our deputy editor, and I'm Alex Osola for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Have a great weekend, and thanks for listening I Your package says deliver. but delivered where exactly The hallway The lobby, your neighbor's apartment Instead of playing detective with your deliveries, get a mailbox at the UPS store. 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