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The week’s hottest real estate listings, ranked by climate risk.
Glued to real estate posts on The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Dwell, Spaces, The Modern House, or Architectural Digest and wondering how those gorgeous homes will hold up in the next decades? I have you covered.
Heatmap has partnered with my new climate risk platform, Habitable. Every Friday, we add a climate risk score to the real estate listings featured in the news this week and ask: Could you live here as the climate changes?
Using a model developed by a team of Berkeley data scientists at Climate Check, Habitable scores each property for heat, flood, drought, and fire risk on a scale of 1-10. One represents the lowest risk and 10 is the highest. Our rating for each hazard is based on climate change projections through 2050. (You can check your own home’s climate risk here.)
For today’s edition, I apply the Habitable Index to see if the record-breaking home sales breaking the internet this week will break the bank when climate change comes knocking.
Photo: Compass Real Estate
Billionaire Ken Griffin wins for buying the most expensive property ever on record in the US. He paid $238 million for a 23,000-square-foot penthouse on Central Park South. Almost as astonishing is its almost non-existent climate risk. His quantitative skills pay off again. Griffin for the win.
Douglas Elliman
The former equestrian estate built in 1860 and home of Andrew Carnegie’s daughter is on the market for the first time in 40 years. The highest selling home in the area was $18 million but this secluded horse farm with private trails over rolling hills is an equestrian dream come true. At $20 million it even feels like a bargain. With horse stables, carriage houses, apple orchards, and barely any climate risk, this place will be a refuge for centuries to come.
Featured in WSJ and listed for $20 million.
Zillow
Here's the story of a house named Brady. Yes, this is the actual Brady Bunch house from the 1970s sitcom and it's been on the market for less than 24 hours!
Reportedly the 2nd most photographed home after the White House, an even weirder fact is that HGTV bought the house in 2018 and gut-renovated the interior to look identical to how it looked in the TV show. Adding to the many reasons this place is un-Habitable, the climate risk of the Studio City, California, bungalow seals the (no-) deal. In addition to all the memories of the Brady kids antics, the house offers extreme flood and drought risk.
Featured in the NY Postand listed for $5.5 million.
The Agency.
Sure, why not. The owner of this space ship-style house, pictured above before it was built, in Bel Air really went for it. After Beyonce and JayZ’s $200 million dollar purchase (see next listing), why not slap a $185 million dollar price tag on this puppy? And get out while the gettings good because while the house won’t flood, fire and drought are coming to this hillside very, very soon.
Featured inWSJand listed at $185m
Google Earth.
This week Jay Z and Beyonce bought the most expensive home in the history of California! The news flooded the headlines: They paid $200 million for a 40,000 square feet Tadao Ando house that used 74,645 cubic yards of concrete (in other words: no carbon emissions spared)! While the spectacular (it must be said!) ocean front property is surprisingly not at risk of flooding, the drought and fire potential represents an equally record-breaking risk … is the house a lemon? Looks like they’ll be making a lot of lemonade.
Featured on TMZ and sold for $200 million.
If Disney chief executive Michael Eisner’s Malibu estate does end up selling for $195 million with similar equally extreme climate risk as new neighbors Beyonce and Jay Z, you gotta hand it to him. The 5-acre oceanfront Mediterranean style complex designed by architect Robert A. M. Stern sits on a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean. And while the house is high enough to not worry about a flood, it’s not much consolation since the drought and fire risk is off the charts and pretty guaranteed. $195 million! Dare to dream Mickey!
Featured in Architectural Digestand listed for $195 million.
Zillow.
What one even does in a 31,000 square foot, I’d love to know but Celine Dion’s giant Las Vegas house just sold for a record breaking $30 million. It was the highest selling home so far at the desert billionaire community. The Summit Club is where residents Tony Robbins, Golden Knights owner Bill Foley, Marc Andreessen, and actor Mark Wahlberg with their record-breaking god complexes are about to face equally record breaking heat, drought and fires. Goodbye reality, hello Vegas.
Featured in Dirt and sold for $30 million.
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Stellantis is pulling back at Belvidere.
One of the biggest wins the United Auto Workers’ secured in its historic negotiations with the Big Three automakers last year was a commitment from Stellantis to reopen and expand its shuttered factory in Belvidere, Illinois. Now the company is shelving those plans, which included retooling the factory to produce electric vehicles and EV batteries, and suing the union for threatening to strike in response.
The dispute illustrates a new turn in the EV transition. Whereas last year auto workers were wary of the transition and fighting to keep their jobs intact, now their jobs are dependent on that transition actually happening, and happening soon. The UAW is concerned that the company will delay the plant’s reopening until 2028 — after the union’s contract expires.
Stellantis idled the Belvidere plant, which previously produced Jeep Cherokees, in February 2023, laying off more than 1,300 workers. But under its agreement with the UAW, the company said it would spend nearly $5 billion to restart the factory. The contract includes commitments to opening a parts distribution hub there this year, producing a new mid-size truck there by 2027, and building an electric vehicle battery plant at the site by 2028. Not only would jobs at Belvidere be restored, but the battery plant was expected to employ an additional 1,300 people. Former Belvidere employees would also be reclassified as temporary layoffs and receive partial pay and full healthcare benefits until operations started up again.
President Joe Biden celebrated Belvidere as a “great comeback story” in his State of the Union speech in March. “Instead of an auto factory shutting down, an auto factory is reopening and a new state-of-the-art battery factory is being built to power those cars,” he said. “Instead of a town being left behind it’s a community moving forward again!”
In July, plans to turn Belvidere into an EV hub seemed to be taking shape when the Department of Energy selected Stellantis for a $335 million grant to transition the plant’s assembly lines to be able to produce electric vehicles. The grant website says the project was anticipated to incorporate “significant upgrades” to the plant’s infrastructure and re-employ about “1,450 unionized and highly skilled employees.” Stellantis, however, did not issue any press releases about the grant. In a statement to the Chicago Tribune, the company said it was “an important step in continuing to work toward finalizing a sustainable solution” for Belvidere.
About a month later, the narrative around Belvidere started to shift. UAW president Shawn Fain posted a video on social media claiming something was “rotten” at Stellantis and accused the company of “putting the brakes” on its plans to reopen the plant. On August 20, Stellantis confirmed that “plans for Belvidere will be delayed,” though it “firmly stands by its commitment” to reopen the plant. The company’s explanation for the decision was vague and did not include a new timeline. “To ensure the Company’s future competitiveness and sustainability,” it said, “it is critical that the business case for all investments is aligned with market conditions and our ability to accommodate a wide range of consumer demands.”
As it stands, the business is not exactly in a sustainable place. In July, Stellantis reported that its U.S. revenues were down 16% compared to the first half of last year. Declining sales have left dealerships with a glut of inventory. Fain blames the company’s poor performance on its CEO Carlos Tavares, questioning how “market conditions” could be holding back investments in Belvidere when Tavares took a 56% raise last year, “making him the highest paid auto executive outside of Tesla.”
In response, the company published a fact check of the union’s claims, which notes that “there is indisputable volatility in the market, especially as the industry transitions to an electrified future. Over the past year, numerous companies across the industry have announced investment and product delays as well as outright product cancellations.” Stellantis currently sells just one EV in the U.S., the Fiat 500e, which it manufactures in Italy; in September, the company announced it had suspended production due to poor sales, though it still has several new EV models slated to launch later this year.
More than a dozen local UAW units all over the country filed grievances against Stellantis in August, arguing that the company’s “failure to plan for, fund and launch these programs constitute a violation” of its contract. The union has threatened to strike if the grievances are not addressed, citing its “right to strike over product and investment commitments” — another provision of the 2023 contract.
Stellantis denies that it has violated the contract and thrown the accusation back at UAW, noting that the agreement included a clause that says it is understood that the investments are “contingent upon plant performance, changes in market conditions, and consumer demand.” It has since filed eight lawsuits against the union and several of its locals for threatening to strike.
The company has also not completely abandoned its plans for the EV transition. A few weeks ago, it announced it would invest more than $406 million to prepare three Michigan factories for EV production. During a livestream in September, Fain wrote off those investments as representing just a small portion of what the company committed to.
In response to questions about why investment in Belvidere was delayed, whether the company would still pursue the federal grant, or what the new timeline for the plant was, a representative from Stellantis sent me bullet points from the previously published fact check.
The Department of Energy did not answer questions about the status or timeline for the factory conversion grant.
On new 2030 projections, stronger hurricanes, and green hydrogen
Current conditions: Rare rainstorms have flooded parts of the Sahara Desert • Storm Kirk is expected to bring flooding to parts of northern France • Wyoming’s 75,000-acre Elk Fire has been burning for nearly two weeks.
Hurricane Milton, currently a Category 5 storm, is expected to make landfall this evening near Tampa, Florida, as a Category 4 hurricane with 130 mph winds, according to the National Weather Service. It will bring between 10 and 15 feet of storm surge (possibly more, depending on which forecast you’re following), plus tornadoes. The conditions have already started to deteriorate and will continue to do so throughout the day. “There is no recent precedent for a major hurricane to take this path toward Florida,” said AccuWeather Director of Forecasting Operations Dan DePodwin. “This is an increasing significant risk of devastating, catastrophic impacts to this region.”
AccuWeather
Climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels almost certainly made Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene a lot worse, according to two new rapid attribution studies by World Weather Attribution and Climate Central. A storm like Hurricane Helene is about two-and-a-half times more likely in the region today compared to what would be expected in a “cooler pre-industrial climate,” WWA found. That means Helene, the kind of storm one would expect to see once every 130 years on average, is now expected to develop at a rate of about once every 53 years. Separately, Climate Central looked at Hurricane Milton, which already has the distinction of being the fifth strongest Atlantic storm on record. The nonprofit’s findings show that Milton’s rapid intensification — one of the fastest and most powerful instances of the phenomenon in history — is primarily due to high sea surface temperatures in the weeks before Milton developed, which was made at least 400 times more likely by climate change and up to 800 times more likely.
“While hurricane seasons eventually end, global temperatures haven’t stopped going up,” wrote Heatmap’s Jeva Lange. “That, perhaps, is the more terrifying subtext of the attribution studies: There will be more Miltons and Helenes.”
There are several big energy reports out this week, and taken together, their findings tell a nuanced story of an energy transition that’s well underway, but still moving too slowly. Let’s start with the big one: The International Energy Agency’s Renewables 2024 report, published this morning. It says that the world is on track to add 5,500 gigawatts of new clean energy capacity by 2030, 80% of which will come from solar PV alone. That means renewables will account for half of global electricity generation by the end of the decade.
IEA
While this is huge progress (the report notes that 5,500 GW is roughly equal the power capacity of China, the European Union, India, and the U.S. combined), it is not enough to meet the COP28 goal of tripling renewable capacity by 2030. But! The IEA stresses that it is “entirely possible” to meet this target if governments can get their acts together, set bold new emission reduction targets in the coming months, and work together to lower the energy transition costs for poorer countries. “The market can deliver on renewables, and now governments need to prioritize investing in storage, grids, and other forms of clean flexibility to enable this transformation,” said Dave Jones, director of global insights at energy think tank Ember. “The next half decade is going to be one heck of a ride.”
So, that’s renewables. Let’s look at what all this means for emissions and, most importantly, warming.
An energy transition report published this morning from Norwegian risk management company DNV concludes, rather remarkably, that energy-related emissions are set to peak this year and begin a steady decline thanks to the plummeting costs of solar and batteries, especially in China. “Emissions peaking is a milestone for humanity,” said Remi Eriksen, group president and CEO of DNV. However, the projected rate of emission reduction is only enough to limit warming to 2.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. “We must now focus on how quickly emissions decline and use the available tools to accelerate the energy transition,” Eriksen added.
The Rhodium Climate Outlook 2024 report, out yesterday, concluded that there is a less than 7% chance of the world limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius “if current trends in policy and technology development continue.” In fact, it projected a “very likely” increase between 2 degrees Celsius and *gulp* 3.7 degrees Celsius by century’s end. However, odds of limiting warming to 2 degrees jump to 96% if all countries can get to net-zero emissions by 2070. To date, 149 countries (representing 88% of global emissions) have made net-zero or carbon neutrality commitments, though it remains to be seen if and when they’ll meet those goals.
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The cost of “green” hydrogen – that which is produced with clean energy – is likely to remain “prohibitively expensive,” according to a new study published yesterday in the journal Joule. The fuel is seen as key to curbing emissions from hard-to-abate sectors (industry, for example), and many are banking on the price of production falling. But the researchers say the high storage and distribution costs are often overlooked. Taking those costs into consideration, carbon capture and storage is cheaper than green hydrogen when it comes to curbing emissions, the researchers found. “Even if production costs decrease in line with predictions, storage and distribution costs will prevent hydrogen being cost-competitive in many sectors,” said lead author Roxana Shafiee, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. “Our results challenge a growing idea that hydrogen will be the ‘Swiss army knife of decarbonization’ and suggest that the opportunities for hydrogen may be narrower than previously thought.”
“After 40 years in a career, hopefully, I get a little leeway from the folks who are accustomed to seeing me cool as a cucumber. But the truth is that with climate-driven extremes putting us in a place that we haven’t been before, it’s very difficult to stay cool, calm, and collected.” –Meteorologist John Morales on his emotional on-air reaction to Hurricane Milton’s rapid intensification.
Rob and Jesse talk with Heatmap staffers about why — and how — consumer choices matter.
How can you fight climate change in your daily life? Last month, Heatmap published our attempt at answering that question: Called Decarbonize Your Life, it’s a series of stories and guides to help you make better, smarter decisions to nudge the energy system away from fossil fuels. We consulted studies, ran our own analysis (with a little help from some friends), and used our expert judgment to arrive at six big, high-leverage actions you can take to fight climate change and cut carbon pollution.
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Jesse and Rob speak with Heatmap’s deputy editor Jillian Goodman and founding staff writer Emily Pontecorvo about what those six big actions are, how the guide came together, and why big choices matter so much more than small ones. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
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Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Jesse Jenkins: So it’s more than just the carbon impact which is the key here, right? This systemic leverage point that you’re trying to make is that you’re trying to think about — beyond just reducing emissions, which is important — how is that actually having some kind of systemic impact on reorienting the global capitalist system, right? That we all live in, towards where we want to go, towards what a net zero emissions lifestyle and society looks like.
Robinson Meyer: And instead of every dollar you spend going to the task of taking oil out of the ground, and the task of building more internal combustion cars, it’s going to the task of building more EVs and harvesting electricity. Anyway, Jillian, I interrupted you.
Jillian Goodman: I was just going to add — and again, I’m just paraphrasing you — every time you drive, it’s a marginal impact. Every single time you use the device. Not only are you emitting less in the short term, you’re emitting less in the long term. And as the grid gets cleaner, every time you drive your EV, your EV will get cleaner, as well.
Emily Pontecorvo: One other thing that we were thinking about a little bit is thinking about these actions in terms of, which ones are you, as an individual, you’re literally the one who’s burning the fossil fuels. When you drive your car, you are burning the gas. When you’re lighting your stove, you’re burning natural gas. And not to put it all on the individual, but you’re the one who has the power to say, Okay, I’m not gonna burn fossil fuels in my home anymore. And whereas with a few other actions — like with rooftop solar, with efficiency improvements — those are extremely important, and those are very high on our list for other reasons. But they’re more indirect.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.
As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.
Intersolar & Energy Storage North America is the premier U.S.-based conference and trade show focused on solar, energy storage, and EV charging infrastructure. To learn more, visit intersolar.us.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.