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This 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 week, we add a climate risk score to the real estate listings featured in the news over the past seven days 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 what’s the climate risk of the many (strange but true) round homes featured in the news this week. Read on to find out what is coming around for the houses that go around!
Wikipedia Commons
A lighthouse in Woods Hole (Falmouth), Massachussetts, goes up for sale this month. The picturesque, cylindrica Nobska Lighthouse Tower will go up for auction along with an historic shingled Cape-style home. Because this lighthouse is on a hill overlooking the coast, there is amazingly no flood risk, no fire risk, low drought, and heat tempered by the sea breezes. A habitable lighthouse? Absolutely. But you’ll have to get in line behind me.
Featured on NPR and listed for auction.
Have you ever heard of a swankienda? It’s a first for me, but apparently it’s a word in Houston circles referring to ‘unique’ Southern architecture. This iconic disc shaped home in an upscale historic neighborhood in Houston fits the bill and the shape does not stop at the roof. Inside is a giant sunken rotunda living room and curved fireplace and walls. Even the sofa is circular. With surprisingly low heat risk considering it’s in Houston, the house has no flood or fire risk and other than the mosquitos should be quite habitable if you can live without architectural symmetry.
Featured in Circa (!) and listed for $550,000.
Hilariously advertised as the only rotating home in San Diego, this architectural ‘showcase’ does offer spectacular views from its lofty perch on top of Mount Helix. And you can choose your view depending on the light, since the house does actually rotate 360 degrees. If you can live with no hard corners, do not get motion sick, and don’t mind extreme drought and some fire risk, then take this house for a spin!
Featured on @zillowgonewild and listed for $5,300,000.
Photo: Zillow
This is such a cool place and a great buy, so it’s depressing to know that it's not going to end well. On the bright side, this unit and several more are available at the Round Dune seasonal apartment complex — which opens every April through October. Built by James Evans in 1963, who studied under Louis Kahn, this oceanfront complex made up of four round two story buildings in East Quoque will be fun to visit or live at until it’s underwater.
Featured @thecreativesagent and listed for $319,000.
Photo: Zillow
A Streamline Moderne (art deco) estate is for sale in Silver Lake in Los Angeles. Built by architect Saul Harris Brown in 1938, the home features many curved architectural elements including an equally curvaceous garden designed by famed modern architect Gregory Ain.
Full of rounded interior and exterior walls, garden walls, balconies and staircases, the circuitous house is at high risk for drought, moderate risk for fire, and has little flood or heat risk. With some luck, this historic structure might live to see its 100th birthday.
Featured on @thecreativesagent and listed for $2,999,000.
Chang Group/Compass
To be fair, this Spanish Revival House in San Marino, California, which just went up for sale for $18,200,000, is not crazy rounded in its architecture. But the current owners renovated the garden arcade to create the home’s main event: a koi pond with a raised circular island with seating and a fire pit. Probably a bad idea for many reasons, including the extreme fire and drought risk for the property and the region. Make room koi, we’re jumping in.
Featured in Dirtand listed for $18,200,000.
Keller Williams Realty Southland Partners
Photo: Keller Williams Realty Southland Partners
This poor spaceship house listed for sale in Kansas City, Missouri, this week can’t catch a break! The namecalling! Saucer shaped. Resembling a UFO. The house was even advertised with a drawing of an alien on the front door and a spaceship over the house. Is it really that bad?
Well, it’s strangely shaped. And the rounded but also oddly angled interiors don’t make the place very habitable. Neither does the climate risk — with a 10/10 chance for flooding, it will also be extremely hot. Maybe it’s time for this house to contact its extraterrestrial friends and boldly go where no house has gone before.
Featured in the New York Post and listed for $349,000.
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Current conditions: Thunderstorms brought widespread flooding to Tampa Bay, Florida • The famous Constantine Arch in Rome was damaged by lightning • Super Typhoon Yagi is now the second-most powerful storm of 2024 and is expected to hit China on Friday.
The Biden administration today is expected to announce $7.3 billion in grants for rural electric cooperatives to finance clean energy projects aimed at bringing reliable, affordable energy to rural Americans. The infusion, which comes from the Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program of the Inflation Reduction Act, is “the largest investment in rural electrification since FDR’s administration,” said White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian. The 16 cooperatives will have projects dotted across 23 states. The projects are expected to create 4,500 permanent jobs and prevent more than 43 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution each year. Biden will announce the news at the Dairyland Power Cooperative in Wisconsin. Dairyland will receive $573 million for solar and wind installations across Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois. “One in five rural Americans will benefit from these clean energy investments, thanks to partnerships with rural electric cooperatives like Dairyland,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement. “Put simply, this is rural power, for rural America.”
Volvo is watering down its commitment to sell only electric vehicles by 2030, aiming instead to have at least 90% of its sales be electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles by that year. CEO Jim Rowan blamed market forces, lack of EV charging infrastructure, and lower-than-expected customer demand for the change. The company said it will invest in plug-in hybrids for growth. “We are resolute in our belief that our future is electric,” Rowan said. “However, it is clear that the transition to electrification will not be linear, and customers and markets are moving at different speeds.” The walk-back follows similar moves from other carmakers including Ford. Volvo was one of the first legacy automakers to commit to a fully-electric future, and as the Financial Timesnoted, it “remains the most bullish about the transition.”
The intense heat wave positioned over the West Coast is bringing dangerously hot temperatures to Southern California. In some areas, temperatures will be 20 degrees above normal for this time of year. Los Angeles will see triple-digit highs through the end of the week. Palm Springs will hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit today. The Woodland Hills neighborhood of L.A. could reach 118 degrees by Friday. “In terms of this summer, it’s going to be the hottest we’ve seen or close to it,” Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told the Los Angeles Times. Cooling centers are open across the state and are listed here. According to the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, average annual temperatures in the state have risen by about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895. Seven of the past eight years have been the warmest on record.
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The Ultium electric vehicle battery plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, has joined the United Auto Workers union. The plant, which employs 1,000 people, is a joint venture between General Motors and LG Energy Solution. The UAW said in a statement that “the workers organized without facing threats or intimidation and won their union once a majority of workers signed cards.” This is the second Ultium plant to unionize, but the first in the South. The other, in Ohio, joined the UAW in 2022. “It could be a big deal,” wrote Jameson Dow at Electrek, “given the developing ‘battery belt’ in the U.S. South, where many companies have decided to build battery plants, with hundreds of billions of dollars in investment and hundreds of thousands of jobs on the docket. If other factories see the success at GM, they might start getting their own ideas and unionization could spread through the industry.”
The results of a new YouGov survey show that drivers are terribly misinformed about the costs, safety, and functionality of electric vehicles. In the survey, 1,000 people who currently drive gas-powered cars were asked to read 10 statements about EVs and identify whether they were true or false. The majority (90%) of participants answered just five or fewer questions correctly, and more than half (57%) of participants scored no higher than two out of 10. In other words, if this test had been scored on an A-F grading scale, nearly everyone would have failed. Sixty-two percent of them said EVs are more expensive to run than internal combustion engine cars (they’re not), 41% thought EVs are more likely to catch fire (they’re not), and 35% believed EVs emit about the same CO2 over their lifetime as ICE vehicles (they don’t).
“This is affecting drivers’ car choices, with people displaying a poor understanding of EVs being less likely to want their next car to be an EV,” concluded the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, the nonprofit that commissioned the survey. “Drivers who scored two or less out of 10 were 11 times less likely to want their next car to be an EV than those who scored eight or more out of 10.”
The survey was conducted in the U.K., but many of these myths are common among U.S. drivers, too.
🙌 The Fight, a new Heatmap Plus weekly newsletter from senior reporter Jael Holzman, just launched. It will deliver must-read exclusive scoops and analysis on the local battles and national trends shaping the future of climate action. Check it out. 🙌
There’s a whole clean energy revolution happening — yes, even in Pennsylvania.
Fracking is just about the last thing Kamala Harris wants to talk about right now, which may be understandable. In a CNN interview last week — her first major sit-down since becoming the Democratic Party’s official nominee for president — she changed her earlier campaign position on whether the technique used to extract oil and natural gas should be banned. Cries of “Flip-flopper!” are a staple of shallow campaign coverage. The issue is a bit complicated, and could prove awkward in at least one battleground state. And she’d rather spend her limited time attacking Donald Trump on abortion and other issues where she has a clearer advantage.
But when the fracking issue comes up again — and it will — Harris has a great story to tell, one that most Americans are probably unaware of. There’s a green energy revolution underway, but rather than celebrate it, Harris and many other Democratic politicians tend to tiptoe around the issue, apparently terrified that a single infelicitous sentence could turn the supposedly large numbers of pro-fossil fuel voters against them.
We saw that dynamic in action on CNN, when interviewer Dana Bash homed right in on the fact that, running in the presidential primaries in 2020, Harris said she favored a ban on fracking. “Fracking, as you know, is a pretty big issue, particularly in your must-win state of Pennsylvania,” Bash said. “Do you still want to ban fracking?” Like almost every political reporter, Bash has no interest in the benefits and problems fracking presents, or whether banning it is a good or bad idea. The point is to zing Harris for her apparent flip-flop and speculate on whether it will move votes in one of the few swing states.
Harris was determined to allay the concerns of any pro-fracking voters tuning in. “I would not ban fracking,” she said. “As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.” Loud and clear!
She did go on to argue that a fracking ban is unnecessary because the Inflation Reduction Act is creating large numbers of green energy jobs, so “we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.” To the casual viewer, it probably seemed like a perfectly good answer, but it was also somewhat beside the point. The reason many would like to ban fracking isn’t that it holds back the creation of green jobs. It’s that it entrenches our reliance on fossil fuels and creates environmental and health problems in the areas where it is deployed.
Of course, all those considerations — jobs, the environment, and where we’re getting our energy now and in the future — are interrelated. Which is why there is an opportunity for Harris to use that question to focus voters’ attention on the transformation now taking place.
With one party saying the only thing that matters in energy is drilling for more fossil fuels and the other telling people not to worry because they won’t stop us drilling for more fossil fuels, how many Americans know about the dramatic increase in renewable energy, especially solar, that is now underway? According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, nearly 50 gigawatts of solar power will be added to the grid this year, accounting for 59% of all new electricity generation:
Wind and solar now generate more electricity than coal. Even more remarkable is how inexpensive solar power has become. Since 1990, the price per kilowatt hour of a solar panel has dropped by 98%, and solar has become the least expensive type of new energy to generate. With all the innovation taking place in the renewable energy world — a good deal of it spurred by the investments made by the Biden administration — energy prices are likely to keep coming down as more and more of our power is generated by renewables.
This is a triumphant story of human ingenuity, thoughtful government action, and the operation of the free market. Harris could use it to describe a glorious future of power that is cheap, clean, and nearly limitless, one she is trying to create and Trump is trying to impede. Given that “We won’t go back” is one of her campaign slogans, it would seem like a perfect fit for her. But like many Democrats, she seems wary of saying anything that might spook the relatively small number of people whose livelihoods depend on fracking.
Consider Pennsylvania, the only swing state where this issue is supposed to matter. From the discussion in the political press, you might think the state’s voters are almost unanimous in their devotion to fracking, but that’s just not true. Even there, the public is closely divided on the issue: Some polls have found majorities of Pennsylvanians opposed to fracking, while others show them split down the middle. And while Pennsylvania produces a lot of natural gas that way, the number of people who actually work in fracking in the state is extremely modest, in the low five figures. Yet the assumption of news coverage is that the contrast between the Biden administration’s emphasis on clean energy and Trump’s opposite “Drill, baby, drill” approach can only redound to Trump’s benefit; as one Wall Street Journalarticle in April was headlined, “A Pennsylvania Fracking Boom Weighs on Biden’s Re-Election Chances.” The Pennsylvanians who are opposed to fracking because of its environmental impacts — or simply see it as something their state no longer needs — are shoved to the periphery of that kind of coverage.
So what if the next time she is asked about why she changed her mind about a fracking ban, Harris took the opportunity to explain to people what the future of energy is actually going to look like, and why it’s so encouraging? She’ll have to do that over the objection (or at the very least the indifference) of the reporters covering her campaign, who neither know nor care about the substance of the climate issue or energy policy. But she should do it anyway. Not only would it be right on the merits, it might even be good politics.
Introducing a new Heatmap Plus newsletter focused on the battles around renewable energy projects
Welcome to The Fight, I’m your punk rock climate journalist host Jael Holzman. I’ve dedicated my entire career in journalism to understanding how and why people oppose projects crucial to decarbonization. Now, every week, I’ll be delivering must-read exclusive scoops and analysis on the local battles and national trends shaping the future of climate action as part of Heatmap Plus, a new side of the site launching today that will go even deeper into the projects, politics, and people shaping the energy transition.
As part of Heatmap Plus, you’ll get high-level analysis of our proprietary polling and forecasting data, in-depth case studies exploring why projects succeed or fail, exclusive interviews with leading policymakers, developers, and activist groups, and my weekly newsletter — The Fight — that will offer a comprehensive weekly snapshot of the battles being waged over renewable energy projects across the country, plus a lot of original reporting.
A little bit about me: For years, I reported on the transition by writing about mining – one of the dirtiest businesses central to renewable energy, vehicle electrification, and industrial decarbonization. As I covered those topics, it was evident that climate activists, policymakers, and investors alike were all quietly torn up by the reality that building things meant some pretty shocking knock-on effects for the environment and society. I also found the threat of those consequences became a useful tool for shaping public opinion against the energy transition, a practice best described as “trade-off denial.”
Earlier this year, I joined Heatmap after being approached with an opportunity: how would I like to investigate conflicts over individual renewables and battery projects in places where a hollowed-out local media left no reporters available to ask the tough questions? On top of that, I’d get to take a wide-angle lens, sussing out what national policy trends, forces, and industries were driving opposition and the hurdles to projects getting built. I could give Heatmap readers all the information they’d need, project by project, accompanied by exclusive data and regular Q&A sessions with readers.
So after months of investigating various projects and their opponents, I’m excited to debut the first edition of The Fight. I’ve got to tell you, these stories might bother you. In our inaugural send, for example, you’ll hear about how a fight against a California battery storage project might impact permitting nationwide, the ways a few activists can manipulate emotional fears to create real roadblocks to construction, and the wide gulf between what regulators and developers want versus the individuals most likely to sue to stop a project.
This won’t always be fun — in fact, sometimes it might be a bummer. But over the span of this newsletter, by talking to all sides involved and providing an airing of grievances, it’s my hope we’ll use well-intentioned journalism to inform you on how the things we need to ditch fossil fuels can be built faster and get community buy-in.
This newsletter will go out exclusively to subscribers of Heatmap Plus. If you want to get it, you can join Plus here — for a limited time, you can take $50 off by using the code FIGHTLAUNCH at checkout.
But enough small talk. Let’s get started.