Despite federal government opposition, new analyses show that green energy installations continue to grow, with projections indicating renewables will become the leading U.S. power source by the 2030s, though emissions are now expected to fall only 16% by 2035 compared to the previously predicted 24%.
from Heatmap. If you’re putting new power onto the grid right now, the cheapest option is likely solar. Thanks to years of declining equipment costs, generous federal subsidies, and voluntary renewables buyers like big technology…
From Heatmap. The Esmeralda 7 solar project, a collection of proposed solar farms and batteries that would encompass tens of thousands of acres of federal public lands in western Nevada, appears to be moving towards…
TLDR: Key Points
A comprehensive analysis by First Street, published today in its 12th National Report, Property Prices in Peril, provides critical insights into the observed and projected effects of climate change on the U.S. real estate market. Utilizing new peer-reviewed methodologies1 and macroeconomic modeling, the report estimates a potential $1.47 trillion reduction in unadjusted real estate value over the next 30 years due to climate-related risks.
Drawing on interdisciplinary research that examines climate risk awareness, housing market dynamics, climate migration patterns, and demographic and socioeconomic shifts, the study offers a forward-looking analysis of the Housing Price Index (HPI), property valuation trends, and localized Gross Domestic Product (GDP) impacts extending to 2055.
This is a NY Times Magazine article with a colorful view of Nevada’s debates about lithium mining, heavily from a frame of view around Patrick Donnelly, the pugnacious head of the Center for Biological Diversity in Nevada. Sample:
The proposed mine, the company replied, would be in Pahrump, Nev., a town where Donnelly did his grocery shopping. The precise location was next to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, a beloved and biodiverse wetland near Donnelly’s home.
“Just saw your map,” Donnelly’s message began. “I would abandon that project right now, because you stand zero, and I mean zero, chance of getting it permitted.” He ended, “No chance that mine moves forward.” [The threats then get more specific; click to read more.]
Editor’s Note: climate change changes economic incentives, which change all sorts of things. Here, a major land owner in Florida exits raising oranges and will use the land for real estate development and other uses because “we must now reluctantly adapt to changing environmental and economic realities. Our citrus production has declined 73% over the last ten years, despite significant investments in land, trees and citrus disease treatments. The impact of Hurricanes Irma in 2017, Ian in 2022 and Milton in 2024 on our trees, already weakened from years of citrus greening disease, has led Alico to conclude that growing citrus is no longer economically viable for us in Florida,” said John Kiernan, Alico’s President and CEO.”
Climate change meant that there were about 41 more “extreme heat” days in 2024, according to the World Weather Attribution’s annual extreme weather report. Climate change contributed to at least 3,700 deaths, but “it’s likely the total number of people killed in extreme weather events intensified by climate change [in 2024] is in the tens, or hundreds of thousands,” the group said. While the El Niño weather pattern contributed to global trends, climate change played a bigger role in fueling extreme weather. “As the planet warms, the influence of climate change increasingly overrides other natural phenomena affecting the weather,” the report added.
In Nevada, plans are moving ahead for transmission lines, solar farms, geothermal plants and more in the name of fighting climate change. Pictured above, a solar farm near Pahrump, NV. Yet even among environmental groups and government officials, the projects are controversial.
Nevada, where the federal government manages more than 80 percent of the land, is a key theater for such development—nearly 12 million acres are eligible for it under the Biden administration’s solar plan, approximately 17 percent of the state. More than one-third of the solar and wind proposals pending before the federal Bureau of Land Management nationwide, meanwhile, are located in Nevada.
If all goes to plan, Virginia will be the site of the world’s first grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant, able to harness this futuristic clean power and generate electricity from it by the early 2030s, according to an announcement Tuesday by the startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
CFS, one of the largest and most-hyped nuclear fusion companies, will make a multibillion-dollar investment into building the facility near Richmond. When operational, the plant will be able to plug into the grid and produce 400 megawatts, enough to power around 150,000 homes, said its CEO Bob Mumgaard.
Soaring costs for home insurance and property taxes are busting homeowners’ budgets.
Insurers have pushed big rate increases because of losses from natural disasters and rising costs to repair homes. Surging home values in recent years, meanwhile, have lifted property taxes for many homeowners.
These ballooning expenses are rewriting the math of homeownership. In September, 32% of the average single-family mortgage payment went to property taxes and home insurance, the highest rate ever for data going back to 2014, according to Intercontinental Exchange.
Editor’s Note: Here’s a post from Jonathan Marshall on Community. He’s written extensively about carbon pricing. See also his recent e-book on Carbon Pricing.
A new paper by three distinguished European economists offers a simple and intuitive method for estimating the “social cost of carbon” (see this thread) in place of more complex and challenging mathematical approaches.
Cutting to the chase, they derive estimates of the social cost of carbon that start around $182 per ton of carbon dioxide today, rising to nearly $600 per ton in 2050.
