You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
The electric car market is still young and volatile, and there’s no reason to commit if you don’t have to.
Four years ago I drove my beloved brown dog home from the high desert beagle rescue in our little red EV. She sat silently in my wife’s lap, wondering what this new life might entail, and spent the ensuing months shedding stabby hairs on the seat cover and slobbering on the back windows as we drove back and forth to the mountains above Los Angeles to hike our way through the darkest days of COVID. Now, she has lost exclusive access to the back seat. Two weeks ago, white-knuckled and nervous, I drove my newborn daughter home from the hospital.
These are the moments that transfigure a hunk of metal into the family car, a thing made of remembrance as much as nuts and bolts. It is a process possible only when you own a vehicle long enough for the good stuff of life to seep into the carpets and scratch up the upholstery. In this way, it matters to me that my Model 3 is our car.
However, after four-plus years of electric vehicle ownership, I am here to tell you: If you’re thinking of getting a new EV this holiday season, then you should probably lease, not buy.
I don’t say this lightly. The idea of leasing sits uneasy with me now that we live in a subscription society where everything is rented and nothing is ours. Leasing, though, could be an ideal solution for those who want to try out the electric life but have reservations about going all-in. And at this moment in the EV age, it’s hard to argue with leasing logic.
For one thing, in terms of resale value, owning a used EV isn’t what it used to be. In 2021, during the chaos of peak pandemic, used car prices spiked to unprecedented levels. As those prices have begun to come down to Earth, EVs are reportedly depreciating at levels faster than gasoline cars, losing as much as half their value in three years, in part because of the price-cutting wars that slashed the cost of a new electric over the past year. As the cost of a new EV continues to fall, the value of owning an older one will wane.
Leasing, at least right now, is also a simpler and better way to shop for an EV. As Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported last week, the tax credits for buying electric are becoming an even more confusing mess in 2024 because Inflation Reduction Act rules mandate domestic manufacturing for pretty much all components of a qualifying car. But a buyer can skirt much of the red tape by leasing rather than buying. Quality but foreign-built EVs like the Hyundai Ioniqs, which don’t qualify for tax credits if you buy them, can qualify if you lease them, too.
Plus, after three years of driving an EV, you might be eager to start over. I bought a Tesla in 2019 when the most affordable Standard Range Plus version of the Model 3 came with an Environmental Protection Agency-estimated 240 miles of range. If I’d leased it, I could have returned the car by now and gotten into a new Model 3 or Y with at least 260 miles of range, a nice little quality-of-life bump. (Honestly, what’s more likely is that after years of living with the limitations of a shorter-range EV, I would have ponied up for a longer-range model on the second go-round.) Instead, I’m stuck with my slowly decaying battery for as long as I decide to hold onto this car.
The other perk of leasing is the freedom from long-term maintenance and other ownership issues. The EV revolution is still young enough that we don’t know how today’s EVs will age, or what particular problems Model 3s or Chevy Bolts or Ford F-150 Lightnings might encounter when they reach 10 or 12 or 15 years old. EV owners will face thorny questions about whether to replace a battery that’s lost much of its capacity, live with the depleted range, or get out from under the car. EV lessees won’t.
The most compelling reason not to buy an EV today, though, is that you don’t know what’s coming around the corner tomorrow. We’re on the cusp of seeing the carmakers produce fully electric versions of all sorts of iconic and beloved vehicles, from the Jeep Wrangler to the Chevy Corvette. Battery improvements will mean more cars on the market with longer ranges, making longer-distance travel less burdensome.
Think of an EV like a smartphone. Gas-powered cars are like the iPhones and Androids of today — a mature, honestly kind of boring technology that doesn’t change much from year to year. Electric cars are more like what smartphones were 10 years ago, when each passing year brought what felt like a major leap forward and your two- or three-year-old phone felt woefully out of date.
Years from now, when you know exactly what you’re getting into, you might feel more comfortable buying an EV to serve as the dutiful family car for a decade to come — the car that takes your son to second grade and the car he learns to drive in. But if you don’t want to be tied down by what’s on offer today, maybe you should just lease it until tomorrow rolls around.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.
Long Islanders, meanwhile, are showing up in support of offshore wind, and more in this week’s edition of The Fight.
Local renewables restrictions are on the rise in the Hawkeye State – and it might have something to do with carbon pipelines.
Iowa’s known as a renewables growth area, producing more wind energy than any other state and offering ample acreage for utility-scale solar development. This has happened despite the fact that Iowa, like Ohio, is home to many large agricultural facilities – a trait that has often fomented conflict over specific projects. Iowa has defied this logic in part because the state was very early to renewables, enacting a state portfolio standard in 1983, signed into law by a Republican governor.
But something else is now on the rise: Counties are passing anti-renewables moratoria and ordinances restricting solar and wind energy development. We analyzed Heatmap Pro data on local laws and found a rise in local restrictions starting in 2021, leading to nearly 20 of the state’s 99 counties – about one fifth – having some form of restrictive ordinance on solar, wind or battery storage.
What is sparking this hostility? Some of it might be counties following the partisan trend, as renewable energy has struggled in hyper-conservative spots in the U.S. But it may also have to do with an outsized focus on land use rights and energy development that emerged from the conflict over carbon pipelines, which has intensified opposition to any usage of eminent domain for energy development.
The central node of this tension is the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline. As we explained in a previous edition of The Fight, the carbon transportation network would cross five states, and has galvanized rural opposition against it. Last November, I predicted the Summit pipeline would have an easier time under Trump because of his circle’s support for oil and gas, as well as the placement of former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary, as Burgum was a major Summit supporter.
Admittedly, this prediction has turned out to be incorrect – but it had nothing to do with Trump. Instead, Summit is now stalled because grassroots opposition to the pipeline quickly mobilized to pressure regulators in states the pipeline is proposed to traverse. They’re aiming to deny the company permits and lobbying state legislatures to pass bills banning the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines. One of those states is South Dakota, where the governor last month signed an eminent domain ban for CO2 pipelines. On Thursday, South Dakota regulators denied key permits for the pipeline for the third time in a row.
Another place where the Summit opposition is working furiously: Iowa, where opposition to the CO2 pipeline network is so intense that it became an issue in the 2020 presidential primary. Regulators in the state have been more willing to greenlight permits for the project, but grassroots activists have pressured many counties into some form of opposition.
The same counties with CO2 pipeline moratoria have enacted bans or land use restrictions on developing various forms of renewables, too. Like Kossuth County, which passed a resolution decrying the use of eminent domain to construct the Summit pipeline – and then three months later enacted a moratorium on utility-scale solar.
I asked Jessica Manzour, a conservation program associate with Sierra Club fighting the Summit pipeline, about this phenomenon earlier this week. She told me that some counties are opposing CO2 pipelines and then suddenly tacking on or pivoting to renewables next. In other cases, counties with a burgeoning opposition to renewables take up the pipeline cause, too. In either case, this general frustration with energy companies developing large plots of land is kicking up dust in places that previously may have had a much lower opposition risk.
“We painted a roadmap with this Summit fight,” said Jess Manzour, a campaigner with Sierra Club involved in organizing opposition to the pipeline at the grassroots level, who said zealous anti-renewables activists and officials are in some cases lumping these items together under a broad umbrella. ”I don’t know if it’s the people pushing for these ordinances, rather than people taking advantage of the situation.”