Source: TheEpoch Times, Louise Chambers
Photo: Courtesy of Anja Nordvålen via Eveline Lunde

Disclaimer: This article was published in 2023. Some information may no longer be current.

A former design student from Norway gave up city life for a remote Arctic island after a boat trip rocked her outlook, and she’s never looked back, despite the huge adjustment.

Originally a city-dweller from Asker, Norway, 31-year-old Eveline Lunde has lived in an apartment in the small town of Longyearbyen, the northernmost town on Earth, on Spitsbergen Island in Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago for the past four years.

Just 800 miles (1,287 kilometers) from the North Pole, Lunde has grown used to permafrost, the northern lights, snowmobiles, the midnight sun, and a thriving polar bear population—a far cry from life at design school in Oslo.

“While studying … I discovered a newfound passion for outdoor life,” Lunde told The Epoch Times. “I moved to northern Norway after completing my bachelor’s degree to pursue a one-year study program on outdoor activities. During my time there, I got to know a group of guys who lived on a sailing boat, with their sights set on reaching Svalbard during the summer.”

When one sailor dropped out of the trip at the last minute, Lunde took his place. She had never seen Svalbard before but after spending six weeks exploring its many Arctic wonders, Eveline was smitten. Returning to Oslo, she grieved the loss.

“I soon realized that I had undergone a transformation,” she said. “The fast-paced city life no longer held the same appeal for me. Svalbard had left an indelible mark on me, prompting me to make the life-changing decision to relocate there.”

The Svalbard archipelago consists of several islands in the Arctic Ocean. The official discovery of Svalbard dates back to 1596, according to World History Encyclopedia, and became Norwegian territory through the Svalbard Treaty (originally the Spitsbergen Treaty) of 1920.

Most of its human residents live on Spitsbergen, and the main island has some unusual features, said Lunde, who works in tourism.

“Due to the permafrost, trees do not grow here,” she said. “Additionally, the harsh climate limits the diversity of animal life. However, the animals that do inhabit this region have adapted remarkably well to the conditions. It’s quite normal to see reindeer and polar foxes roaming around in Longyearbyen. During the summer, we are also visited by numerous geese.”

A town of around 2,300 people, Longyearbyen is also home to a “significant” polar bear population numbering several hundred. The bears are monitored and protected. Nonetheless, residents are required to carry a flare gun as a deterrent, and a rifle as a last resort, when venturing out on hikes or longer journeys.

Lunde said: “It is strictly prohibited to kill a polar bear, except in cases of self-defense. In the event of a polar bear being killed, a thorough investigation would be conducted, treating it with the same seriousness as if it were a human fatality.”

Innumerable natural wonders make life on the Arctic archipelago a magical, if challenging, experience.

“Experiencing the extremes of the polar night and the midnight sun evokes a mix of emotions within me,” Lunde said. “It’s both challenging and awe-inspiring. I appreciate the unique and distinct seasons that Svalbard offers. However, maintaining a sense of routine and staying positive are essential to cope with these conditions.”

During the phenomenon of the “midnight sun,” lasting from April to August, it can be a struggle to sleep with sunlight streaming in through the windows. But during the “polar night,” from October to February, the island experiences total darkness 24 hours a day.

To avoid depression, Lunde prioritizes routine, staying active, and maintaining a social life with the island’s close-knit community at local pubs, cafes, and high-end restaurants. She even hikes through the winter, with a headlamp and spikes on her shoes for the snow-covered icecaps.

Sunlight aside, the weather in Svalbard goes through rapid changes and frequent harsh conditions.

“During the winter, we often face intense storms,” said Lunde, reflecting, “[W]hat I find amusing is that we’ve become accustomed to such weather and continue with our daily routines unaffected, whereas, on the mainland, similar weather would lead to widespread shutdowns and be considered a serious threat. In Svalbard, it’s just another typical day, where wearing goggles for the walk to work is part of our regular routine.”

The Longyearbyen road network covers only about 27 miles (43 kilometers), and cars don’t cut it in winter. Instead, residents drive snowmobiles or dog sleds. In summer they use boats to access cabins and other settlements on the island.

There is one small emergency hospital in Spitsbergen for minor ailments only. Pregnant women are not permitted to give birth on the island and must relocate to the mainland around one month before their due date. Anyone who requires ongoing care or is unable to take care of themselves is not allowed to live on the archipelago at all.

Yet, the challenges of Arctic life amplify the “stunning beauty of Svalbard on those perfect days” by contrast, Lunde said. Locals enjoy hiking, skiing, dog sledding, and snowmobiling year-round, and even the occasional concert, art exhibit, and theater show. Not to mention, they have the world’s greatest light show, the Aurora Borealis, in permanent residence overhead.

The population of Svalbard comprises a diverse mix of people, not only Norwegians. The archipelago at large used to be a hotspot for whaling and trapping but has since moved through coal mining into tourism and Arctic exploration, research, and education.

Lunde cannot speak highly enough of her chosen home.

“As a local, I wholeheartedly recommend visiting this extraordinary place,” she said. “The opportunity to witness the pristine Arctic landscapes, encounter majestic wildlife, and immerse oneself in the unique culture and warmth of the community is truly unmatched.”

Louise Chambers is a writer, born and raised in London, England. She covers inspiring news and human interest stories.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/the-northernmost-town-on-earth-woman-tells-of-her-unusual-life-on-an-island-800-miles-from-the-north-pole

Source: Fast Company, Adele Peters
Photo: David Esquivel/UCLA

Nearly 10 months after the Eaton wildfire, the rebuild process is slowly getting underway. Now, residents are turning to prefab to build their houses faster, more cheaply, and largely in factories.

At 3:20 a.m. on January 8, Steve Gibson and his wife were jolted awake by a phone call: the Eaton fire was approaching their home in Altadena, California, and they had to evacuate.

“We left in about 15 minutes,” Gibson says. “So we only took our passports, our insurance papers, three pairs of underwear, and our little dog, Cantinflas.” They thought that they’d be able to come back within a few hours. But they soon learned that their house—and their entire block—had been destroyed.

They spent the next few weeks moving from short-term rental to short-term rental, and finally moved into an apartment, though they knew that insurance would only cover the cost temporarily. Then they faced the next challenge: what would it take to rebuild their home?

More than 10 months after the L.A. fires, the rebuilding process in the fire zone is painfully slow. In Altadena, where more than 5,000 houses burned in the Eaton fire, only a few hundred are currently being rebuilt. (Only one, an ADU, has been completed as of mid-November.) But some—including Gibson’s—are moving faster than others because homeowners have turned to prefab construction.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91445960/prefab-housing-rebuild-effort-altadena

Source: Fast Company, Adele Peters
Photo: Vid Ingelevics and Ryan Walker/courtesy Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

Once home to oil refineries and factories, this stretch of Toronto waterfront now features a sprawling park that doubles as flood protection.

For more than a century, a stretch of riverfront in Toronto was an industrial wasteland, with oil storage tanks, factories, and shipping infrastructure sitting on former wetlands. Now, part of the site is a sprawling new park, and next year, construction will begin on a new neighborhood inside it.

“It’s incredibly transformed,” says Emily Mueller De Celis, a landscape architect at the firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, which won a competition to “renaturalize” the area in 2007. “Rather than walking around in and amongst oil refineries and other industry, now you are immersed in nature, walking along the banks of a river with spectacular views back to the city.”

The area was dotted with factories in the late 1800s. The river was dredged and corralled into a channel as the city tried to flush pollution from the factories into the nearby harbor. By the early 1900s, the wetlands in the area—now overrun with toxic waste—were filled in to build a new industrial district. Pollution kept getting worse.

The changes to the river also caused new flooding. By the 1980s, activists were calling for the restoration of the river. By the early 2000s, the government launched an effort called Waterfront Toronto to revitalize the area and create new flood protection, and it started to demolish some of the old industrial infrastructure.

The scale of the $1.4 billion project, along with inevitable delays, meant that it’s taken a very long time. “This is the largest infrastructure project in North America,” says Mueller De Celis. The project carved out more than 1.3 million cubic meters of soil, reshaping a new mouth for the river and creating a new island where the park, called Biidaasige Park, now sits. The design helps protect adjacent areas from flooding.

From the beginning, Waterfront Toronto wanted to use green infrastructure for flood protection. “They had the vision to identify that this wasn’t going to be an engineering solution,” Mueller De Celis says. “It would be a solution that really tied us back into the naturalized system of the [river] valley, and into the public realm to get people access to nature.”

The excavated river is now deeper and surrounded by new wetlands where the water can spread, with berms that help hold water back from other neighborhoods. The island where the park sits was built high enough to avoid flooding.

A coalition of partners working on the project carefully designed the park to help bring back wildlife to the area. The park is filled with trees that will eventually form a canopy forest. Along the edge of the river, where engineers might typically use stone or concrete, the team brought in large trees and locked them together in a pattern that helps prevent erosion—and creates new “fish hotels” in the empty spaces as habitat. Other felled trees were laid down hanging over the water to add more new space for amphibians, fish, and birds. Red-tailed hawks, eagles, and otters have returned.

This summer, the first phase of the park opened to the public, and the next phase will open in 2026. The park surrounds the new island, and the center will soon become a mixed-use development. Design work started this year on streets and infrastructure, and construction of new homes is expected to begin next year. Eventually, the island will be home to 15,000 residents, 3,000 jobs, and another 15 acres of park space.

Nearly a decade ago, Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary focused on urban technology, hoped to build a smart city along a nearby part of the waterfront. But it abandoned the project in 2020. Toronto is now focused on using the whole area to help deal with its housing shortage. At the beginning of 2025, the Canadian government, along with the city and provincial governments, invested another $975 million to build new housing on the waterfront.

The park and redesigned river had to come first, to make sure any new development would be protected from floods. “It’s a different way of thinking about building within a city,” Mueller De Celis says.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adele Peters is a senior writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to climate change and other global challenges, interviewing leaders from Al Gore and Bill Gates to emerging climate tech entrepreneurs like Mary Yap.. She contributed to the bestselling book Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and a new book from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies called State of Housing Design 2023.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91420442/in-toronto-a-polluted-industrial-wasteland-is-now-a-beautiful-park

Source: NBC, Jing Feng and Vicky Nguyen
Photo: Walmart’s Great Value sports drinks will no longer have added coloring. Drinks with, right, and without, left, artificial food dye at Walmart’s Culinary Innovation Center. (Jing Feng/NBC News)

Big changes are coming to the food aisles of America’s largest retailer.

Walmart announced Wednesday it will eliminate synthetic dyes from all its private-label brand food products. Those brands include Marketside, Bettergoods and Great Value, which is the nation’s largest consumer packaged goods brand, found in 90% of households, according to NielsenIQ.

The retailer has set a full implementation deadline of January 2027. It also pledged to eliminate 30 other ingredients, including certain preservatives, artificial sweeteners and fat substitutes.

The shift to natural dyes will mean reformulating and testing more than 1,000 products, though Walmart says 90% of its store-brand food items are already free of artificial colors. The company said the move reflects changing customer preferences.

“This is a direct response to what the customer is telling us,” said Scott Morris, senior vice president of Walmart’s private food brands. “They’re looking for simpler ingredients, simpler nutrition panels.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Food and Drug Administration have been pushing food makers to phase out artificial colors by the end of 2027. So far, the agency has leaned on voluntary commitments from companies rather than imposing a blanket regulatory ban. Companies including PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz and General Mills have announced similar plans to remove synthetic dyes from food products.

Walmart said the shift to natural food dyes has been in the works for years, but the timing of the announcement reflects current industry trends. “The customer is louder than they ever were, and we felt like the industry was ready for us to move to scale,” Morris explained.

Will the change drive up prices, though? Morris acknowledged “it’s an item-by-item dynamic,” but emphasized Walmart’s commitment to low prices. “Our history is: We’ve done an outstanding job of shielding our customers from these moves,” he said.

Food scientists at Walmart are working to ensure that foods reformulated with natural dyes keep the same taste and texture, while matching colors as closely as possible. Some products may take on more subdued shades, while others may lose their color completely.

Walmart gave NBC News exclusive access to its Culinary Innovation Center in Bentonville, Arkansas, where product developers showcased some of their reformulated products compared with the old versions.

In one demo, naturally colored cupcake frosting was nearly indistinguishable from the original artificially dyed versions. Katie Miles, Walmart product developer and pastry chef, explained that the bright colors were achieved by using ingredients like spirulina, beets and other root vegetables. It was a three-year effort, she noted, with challenges that included masking the earthy flavor of the vegetables and getting the right pH balance for shelf stability.

The reformulated version of Great Value Fruit Spins, the brand’s colorful ring-shaped cereal, was noticeably less vibrant. Prabhat Kumar, Walmart director of product development, said extensively processed foods like cereal pose a challenge because processing can distort the natural colors. “Blue, green and purples are not as vibrant,” Kumar noted, but consumers will get the same flavor and texture. The cereal still needs to undergo consumer testing to gauge whether shoppers accept the new look before Walmart puts it on shelves.

Walmart’s private-label sports drinks are going dye-free, leaving the liquid a cloudy white instead of the bright blue of its artificially colored version. When it comes to customers shopping for sports drinks, “color drives the decision,” Walmart product developer Andie Garcia said, but “we could not get this blue in a natural color.” Instead, her team decided to wrap the bottle in a blue plastic sleeve, since consumers link bold colors with stronger flavors.

Morris said consumer feedback suggests that shoppers are open to the visual changes. When it comes to food color, “the customer is continuously telling us that it’s not necessary everywhere,” he said. Walmart’s key message, he added, is that taste and quality remain unchanged, even if the colors look different.

Some research has linked synthetic dyes to hyperactivity and restlessness in certain kids. But the FDA said the dyes are safe for most.

Walmart’s announcement also includes the removal of 30 additional ingredients, including certain preservatives, artificial sweeteners and fat substitutes. These include ingredients that California has already moved to ban, including potassium bromate, an oxidizing agent for dough, and propylparaben, a preservative. Morris said they were targeted because of the availability of alternatives on the market that “don’t compromise the quality or cost.”

Renee Leber, a food scientist at Institute of Food Technologists, said the shift to natural dyes has been underway for more than a decade, fueled by the clean label movement of the 2010s, but the FDA’s latest actions have given it new momentum.

The challenge now isn’t just reformulating, she said, but convincing customers to accept the visual changes. Food companies haven’t always succeeded at this, she noted, pointing to Trix cereal as an example, which removed artificial dyes but brought them back in 2017 when customers complained.

As colors become less vibrant, companies “might have to start leaning harder into the messaging of why they are making this change,” she said, “and to bring the consumers along that journey with them.” Because when it comes to food, Leber noted, what people see can be just as important as what they taste.

Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, welcomed Walmart’s move.

“Given the incremental steps that have been announced by some food companies, this commitment is a bold declaration and response to consumer sentiment that has become increasingly wary of the long list of chemicals found in so many processed foods,” Ronholm said in a news release. “Walmart’s decision shows that food companies don’t have to wait for the FDA’s regulatory process to catch up with the science. Hopefully, others in the food industry will take notice and follow suit.”

Jing Feng

Jing Feng is a producer at NBC News covering business and the economy.

Vicky Nguyen

Vicky Nguyen is the senior chief investigative correspondent for NBC News. See her reports on “TODAY,” “Nightly News with Tom Llamas,” MSNBC and NBC News Now.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/walmart-eliminate-synthetic-food-dyes-store-brands

Source: Fast Company, Adele Peters
Photo: Polar Night Energy

Thanks to a new thermal energy storage system, when residents in this small town north of Helsinki need hot water, it comes from a giant tank of super hot sand.

A small town in Finland is experimenting with a new type of infrastructure: the world’s largest sand battery.

The battery—a 42-foot-tall, nearly 50-foot-wide silo filled with 2,000 tons of crushed stone—sits on the edge of a parking lot. When there’s extra renewable electricity on the grid and power is cheap, the system uses electricity to heat up the crushed stone. That heat is stored in the battery until nearby buildings need to use it.

The basic approach is simple. “We just heat air and [circulate it] through sand,” says Liisa Naskali, COO of Polar Night Energy, the Finnish startup that designed the technology. Sand, or other material crushed into sand-size particles, has the ability to store heat for weeks. Unlike some other batteries, the system doesn’t rely on chemicals, doesn’t degrade, and won’t catch on fire.

The town, called Pornainen, relies on a district heating network to heat a group of buildings, from city offices and the local school to some businesses and apartment complexes. Until recently, the network burned oil or wood chips to run. But the municipality is aiming to become carbon neutral, and realized that it needed to make a change.

Now if someone in a nearby apartment turns on hot water for a shower, the heat comes from the sand battery. Like other district heating systems, the heat from the battery travels to other buildings via pipes filled with hot water; each building has its own equipment to distribute the heat to radiators, floor heaters, or other HVAC systems.

The battery started running this summer, and was officially inaugurated this week, meaning the district heating system no longer uses oil at all. Over the summer, it relied entirely on the sand battery.

As the weather gets colder, the system will use both the battery and wood chips, but the use of wood chips can drop by around 60%. (Burning wood chips is technically carbon neutral since trees take in carbon as they grow, but since trees are slow to grow and burning is fast, it’s not a good short-term climate solution—and it also produces a lot of other pollution.)

Though the startup calls the technology a “sand” battery, it can use other materials. For the new installation in Pornainen, the company turned to soapstone scraps from a nearby fireplace manufacturer. That helped reduce waste and avoided the environmental challenges of sourcing sand, which is typically excavated from rivers, lakes, or shorelines.

Inside the silo, the company uses a heat exchanger and a closed-loop system to circulate heat. Software runs heaters when electricity prices are low. Throughout the summer, Naskali says, the utility paid around 10% of the average price of electricity by charging only at optimal times. That helps make the technology cost-competitive, though the initial installation cost is high, she says.

The startup is now in talks with other utilities. Factories can also use the technology to replace fossil fuels for high-heat processes. Other startups, including Rondo Energy and Antora Energy, are also pioneering new approaches to thermal energy storage.

For Polar Night Energy, the project in Pornainen is a critical proof point. “This is really important for us,” Naskali says, “because now we can show that this really works.”

The application deadline for Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, October 3, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adele Peters is a senior writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to climate change and other global challenges, interviewing leaders from Al Gore and Bill Gates to emerging climate tech entrepreneurs like Mary Yap.. She contributed to the bestselling book Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and a new book from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies called State of Housing Design.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91393820/in-finland-this-giant-battery-is-helping-heat-apartments-and-offices-using-sand

Source: Fast Company, Adele Peters
Photo: At a new park in New York, flood protection is hiding right under your feet. (Battery Park City Authority)

The newly renovated Wagner Park is a beautiful place to relax—but it’s also a key part of New York’s new plan to protect the city from water during storms.

If you sit on the terraced steps at the newly-rebuilt Wagner Park on the Manhattan waterfront, looking out at the Statue of Liberty, you probably won’t know that there’s an 18-foot-tall flood wall hidden under your feet.

The small park, which just opened after an 18-month renovation, is one piece of a larger, $1.7 billion system of flood protection being installed in New York City.

Most of the park now sits around 10 feet higher than it did in the past, with the hidden wall high enough to hold back water in a storm surge. Under the central lawn, a 63,000-gallon stormwater cistern holds rain in heavy storms, then recycles the water to irrigate the park. On the other side of the wall, near the Hudson River, rain flows through gardens and into an infiltration system that releases it slowly to help avoid floods.

“You can engineer these solutions with large floodwalls everywhere,” says Raju Mann, president and CEO of Battery Park City Authority, the public benefit corporation that manages urban planning in the area. “But here, we took a more careful approach. How do we have a great open space that also has flood protection in it—not how do we just build a flood protection project?”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91377941/at-a-new-park-in-new-york-flood-protection-is-hiding-right-under-your-feet

Source: Fast Company, Adele Peters
Photo: Sven Loeffler/Getty Images

The One Big Beautiful Bill is quickly sunsetting tax credits for all sorts of clean energy purchases—from EVs and heat pumps to batteries and solar panels. If you want to claim them, here are the dates each are ending.

If you want to buy an electric vehicle—or solar panels or a heat pump or home battery—there’s a short window of time to make use of the existing federal tax credits currently available. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, the tax credits were supposed to last 10 years. Now, thanks to the Republican One Big Beautiful Bill, there are only about 10 weeks left to claim the EV tax credits before they disappear. Other clean energy tax credits will expire at the end of the year. Here’s what you need to know if you want to make use of them to help cut emissions and save on your energy bills.

New electric vehicles
Deadline: September 30

If you need a new car, it’s a good time to get an EV. Models qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500 if they’re assembled in North America and meet American sourcing requirements for battery parts and critical minerals. There’s a price limit of $55,000 for cars and $80,000 for trucks, and an income limit for taxpayers ($150,000 for single filers). You can claim the credit on your tax return next year, but many dealerships also offer the option to transfer the credit to the dealer and get an immediate discount. For foreign-made EVs, you may still be able to get a discount if you lease a car through a loophole that classifies leased cars as “commercial clean vehicles.” The dealer can get the tax credit and pass on the savings to you.

Used electric vehicles
Deadline: September 30

The market for used EVs is booming; they’ve outsold used gas cars for five out of the last seven months. More than a third of the EVs available now are under $25,000. That’s the price limit for used cars to qualify for a $4,000 tax credit. (Cars also have to be purchased from a licensed dealer, be at least two years old, and on resale for the first time.) The income limit for taxpayers is lower than for new cars: For a single person, your adjusted gross income needs to be $75,000 or less.

EV chargers
Deadline: June 2026

If you need an EV charger in your garage, you have more time to make your purchase: The tax credit of up to $1,000 doesn’t expire until next summer.

Rooftop solar
Deadline: December 31

Like some of the other clean energy credits, the tax credit for solar panels existed long before the Biden administration. For the past 20 years, if you installed solar panels or solar shingles on your roof, you could get a 30% tax credit (on average, worth around $4,600). Now it’s going away. Adding solar to your home can help save thousands per year on electric bills. If you pair the panels with home battery storage, you can also have clean backup power when the grid goes down.

If you lease solar panels rather than buying them, the incentives last a little longer: Companies that lease solar can claim federal tax credits until 2027 and pass on savings to you. But because tariffs are pushing prices up, it may still make sense to act sooner.

Battery storage, including some induction stoves
Deadline: December 31

Even if you don’t have rooftop solar, a home battery can help you save money and cut emissions by storing electricity when there’s extra renewable energy available on the grid. To qualify for the current 30% tax credit, the battery must have a capacity of at least 3 kilowatt-hours. It includes sleek wall units and even high-end induction stoves that double as battery storage. Like companies that lease solar, those that lease batteries have longer to claim tax credits—until the 2030s, in this case.

Geothermal heating
Deadline: December 31

Even if you live in a climate that’s sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter, the temperature underground stays steady. Geothermal heat pumps tap into this, transferring heat into a house in the winter and reversing the process in the summer to keep the house cool.

They’re pricey, with costs ranging from $15,000 to $35,000 or more. The current tax credit offers 30% of the cost of the tech and installation, with no cap and no income limit for the taxpayer. Again, there’s a longer timeline for companies that lease geothermal systems to claim credits and offer consumers some savings.

Air-source heat pumps
Deadline: December 31

Air-source heat pumps pull heat from the air, even in cold climates like Maine. Swapping out a gas furnace and air conditioner for air-source heat pumps (either a central system or mini splits) can help you save hundreds of dollars per year on energy bills. Heat pumps are around three times more efficient than traditional heating.

If your current HVAC system is nearing the end of its life, this could be a good time to invest. Heat pumps are pricey, with an average whole-home system costing nearly $20,000; a single-zone system can cost around $6,000. The current 30% tax credit has a cap of $2,000.

Water heaters
Deadline: December 31

A heat pump water heater is as much as four times as efficient as a standard water heater, and can help save around $200 per year for some homes. The current tax credit covers up to 30% of the cost, with a cap of $2,000. Solar water heaters, which use a rooftop system to heat water, are eligible for a 30% credit with no cap.

Weatherization, electrical upgrades, and home energy audits
Deadline: December 31

To help make your house more energy-efficient, you can get tax credits of up to 30% on insulation and air sealing ($1,200 cap); exterior doors (up to $500); and windows and skylights ($600). Electrical upgrades are capped at $600. (In total, weatherization and electrical upgrades can’t get a credit larger than $1,200 for the year.) Another tax credit offers $150 for a professional home energy audit.

Next steps

Under the IRA, with incentives that would have been in place for a decade, homeowners could slowly make upgrades as existing equipment wore out. Now they have to make harder decisions about what to prioritize in the next few months. Even without the tax credits, there are still thousands of other incentives in place from states, local governments, and utility companies. The savings calculator from the nonprofit Rewiring America can help you find additioal ways to save. The IRA’s rebates for clean energy products weren’t cut in the reconciliation bill, and some states have rolled out rebate programs using those funds.

Meanwhile, energy prices are expected to keep going up. That’s both because of the huge energy demand from companies like data centers and because the Big Beautiful Bill made it much harder to build new renewable energy, the cheapest source of new power.

Investing in solar, heat pumps, or other clean devices is “a way for homeowners to get themselves off the roller coaster of ever-increasing energy prices,” says Alex Amend, communications director at Rewiring America. Even without the tax credits to help with up-front costs, the new equipment can make sense financially over its lifetime. “As soon as you’ve flipped the switch, you’re going to be saving hundreds of dollars annually,” Amend says. “That’s still very much worth the investment.”

The super-early-rate deadline for Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies Awards is this Friday, July 25, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adele Peters is a senior writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to climate change and other global challenges, interviewing leaders from Al Gore and Bill Gates to emerging climate tech entrepreneurs like Mary Yap.. She contributed to the bestselling book Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and a new book from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies called State of Housing Design 2023.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91371585/how-to-use-the-clean-energy-tax-credits-before-theyre-gone

Source: Fast Company, Adele Peters
Photo: Chinese automaker BYD showcases one of its EVs at a promotional event in Kathmandu, Nepal, February 26. (Sulav Shrestha/Xinhua/Getty Images)

Five years ago, there were barely any EVs in Nepal. Last year, 65% of the cars sold were electric.

Nepal’s capital Kathmandu is one of the most polluted cities in the world. But it’s also one of the fastest growing markets for EVs: Nepal’s electric cars now outsell new fossil-fueled vehicles. In the U.S., around 9% of new cars sold last year were electric. In Nepal, that number was around 65%.

“There’s been a really remarkable transformation in the uptake of electric vehicles,” says David Sislen, the World Bank country director for Nepal, Maldives, and Sri Lanka. Only five years ago, EVs made up a tiny fraction of new car sales in Nepal. Three-wheeled minibuses, a popular vehicle in the country, were also mostly gas. For those vehicles now, “the adoption rate went from less than 1% to 83%,” Sislen says.

There was one main reason for the change. “So many public policy challenges are complicated and nuanced and hard to understand, but this one is the opposite,” he says. “It’s incredibly simple. In July of 2021, the government radically dropped the import duties and excise taxes on electric vehicles. You make it cheaper, and suddenly people will adopt them.” (The country has recently slightly increased taxes on EVs, likely because it was missing the revenue. But electric vehicles are still a better bargain.)

After someone owns an EV, it’s also cheaper to operate than a gas or diesel vehicle. That’s true anywhere, but especially in Nepal, where fuel is imported and expensive. Charging an EV could be a tenth of the cost of refueling another vehicle, or even less. The models that are available—from companies like China’s BYD and India’s Tata—are also desirable. (Tesla also recently started selling cars in Nepal, though Chinese alternatives are more affordable and arguably even better performing.)

“You see electric vehicles every day, all day long,” says Sislen. “It feels like it’s half of what’s on the road. And the number of [electric] dealerships is amazing.”

Nepal was an early adopter of electric three-wheeled vehicles, known locally as tempos. The first wave of hundreds of electric tempos, funded by USAID and manufactured locally, rolled out in the Kathmandu Valley in the 1990s. But by the turn of the century, government policy helped kill the early industry by cutting import taxes on gas microbuses. Now, modern electric tempos are quickly growing again.

Charging can still be a challenge, though charging infrastructure is also quickly growing, along with alternatives like battery swapping. “We want to deploy technology to make the entire journey seamless,” says Deepak Rauniar, an entrepreneur who is working on a network of battery-swapping stations for two-wheeler and three-wheeler EVs throughout the region.

Kathmandu is also beginning to roll out a fleet of larger electric buses. Last year, Sajha Yatayat, a co-op bus service that serves the city, added 40 new electric buses and a large new charging station, and it now plans to add another 100. The buses cost around 33 times less to charge than fueling a bus with diesel, although the upfront cost is higher.

The charging essentially runs on clean electricity, since most of the country’s energy comes from hydropower. “That makes this even more impactful—you’re not charging your vehicles with coal-fired power,” says Sislen. “You’re charging them with green energy.”

Nepal’s climate goals under the Paris agreement include getting to 90% adoption of EVs for private four-wheeled vehicles by 2030. Though with just 0.027% of global emissions, climate isn’t the biggest reason for the country to act—instead, it’s air pollution.

Kathmandu’s geography, surrounded by mountains, traps pollutants. Climate change is leading to more drought in the winter, meaning less rain to help clear the air. Pollution comes from a variety of sources, including wildfires (also increasing because of climate change), and outdated boilers at factories, which the World Bank is pushing to help replace. But transportation is another key factor. And with fewer vehicles belching black exhaust on roads in Kathmandu, the city will be a healthier place to live.

The final deadline for Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech Awards is Friday, June 20, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adele Peters is a senior writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to climate change and other global challenges, interviewing leaders from Al Gore and Bill Gates to emerging climate tech entrepreneurs like Mary Yap.. She contributed to the bestselling book Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and a new book from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies called State of Housing Design 2023.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91345333/how-nepal-became-one-of-the-worlds-fastest-growing-ev-markets

Source: Fast Company, Grace Snelling
Photo: A home damaged by Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Florida, 2019 (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

AccuWeather expects 7 to 10 hurricanes during the Atlantic hurricane season, which starts on June 1.

This week, AccuWeather released its prediction for the Atlantic hurricane season. The weather service found that after last year’s Hurricanes Beryl, Helene, and Milton, 2025 will likely be another supercharged year for tropical storms.

AccuWeather expects the Atlantic hurricane season, which starts on June 1, to yield 13 to 18 named storms, including 7 to 10 hurricanes. Of those, three and six are expected to have direct U.S. impacts, with the Gulf Coast, Atlantic Canada, the Carolinas, and northwestern Caribbean at the highest risk.

Meanwhile, as climate change and record-warm ocean temperatures usher the U.S. into yet another intense storm season, the Trump administration has signaled that it may be working to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Here’s what to know:

Why does hurricane season keep getting worse?

According to AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva, one of the main factors driving the company’s prediction is elevated water temperatures. Across the ocean’s surface, including in the Gulf and Caribbean, temperatures aren’t just well above historical averages, the warm waters also extend to deeper depths than usual. Warm water fuels storms by evaporating quickly, causing rising columns of moist air to feed developing hurricanes—meaning that an abundance of warm water can make hurricanes develop both more quickly and more intensely.

“A rapid intensification of storms will likely be a major story yet again this year as sea-surface temperatures and ocean heat content (OHC) across most of the basin are forecast to be well above average,” DaSilva said in a news release.

Last year, high OHC supercharged intense storms, including Hurricane Beryl and Hurricane Milton. In an article for The Conversation that summer, expert Brian Tang noted, “The peak intensification rates of hurricanes increased by an average of 25% to 30% when comparing hurricane data between 1971-1990 and 2001-2020.”

Experts believe that as climate change continues to worsen and ocean temperatures rise, it’s likely that hurricane season will only become more extreme and more dangerous.

What’s going on with FEMA?

As more information about the upcoming hurricane season comes to light, it appears that the Trump administration may be gearing up to shutter the government’s largest disaster aid group.

On Monday, Kristi Noem, secetary of Homeland Security, reportedly said that her department planned to “eliminate” FEMA. On Tuesday, CNN reported that top officials from FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security met to discuss FEMA’s future and options for shutting it down. According to CNN, the agency is currently in a state of disarray as more than $100 billion in disaster assistance and grant money is frozen and hiring is largely stalled.

The elimination of FEMA could have major consequences for the future of disaster relief in the U.S. In January, Samantha Montano, an emergency management professor at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, told Fast Company that abolishing FEMA would result in “a less effective, less efficient, and less equitable emergency management system, which means it makes all of us less safe. Without question, we would see higher death tolls, greater physical damage, and immense economic impacts.”

Currently, aid from FEMA is provided only after local jurisdictions have depleted their own resources and the agency’s intervention is approved by Congress. In 2023, the agency spent $30 billion aiding in the aftermath of fires, floods, landslides, tornadoes, hurricanes, and winter storms across the country. In 2024, FEMA workers went door-to-door providing aid after Hurricane Helene struck. Now, though, when the agency should be prepping for the upcoming hurricane season, staffers tell CNN that they’ve had to pause their operations.

“March is typically when we’re finalizing hurricane plans. A lot of that got paused,” one anonymous source shared. “So, it’s already having an impact, which is that we’re not preparing.”

The final deadline for Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards is TODAY, Friday, March 28, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Grace Snelling is an editorial assistant for Fast Company with a focus on product design, branding, art, and all things Gen Z. Her stories have included an exploration into the wacky world of Duolingo’s famous mascot, an interview with the New Yorker’s art editor about the scramble to prepare a cover image of Donald Trump post-2024 election, and an analysis of how the pineapple became the ultimate sex symbol.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91306634/trump-wants-to-dismantle-fema-at-the-same-time-that-experts-are-predicting-a-brutal-hurricane-season

Source: Fast Company, Nichola Groom, Reuters
Photo: Pixabay

Environmental groups have been pushing for U.S. protection of the winged pollinators for a decade.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposed listing the monarch butterfly as a threatened species on Tuesday, citing a significant decline in the iconic black and orange insects that has pushed them toward extinction.

Why it’s important

Monarch butterflies, known for migrating thousands of miles (km) across North America, have experienced a decades-long U.S. population decline due to habitat loss caused by human activities such as farming and urban development, widespread use of pesticides and climate change.

Environmental groups have been pushing for U.S. protection of the winged pollinators for a decade.

Key quote

“The iconic monarch butterfly is cherished across North America, captivating children and adults throughout its fascinating lifecycle,” U.S. FWS Director Martha Williams said in a statement.

“Despite its fragility, it is remarkably resilient, like many things in nature when we just give them a chance. Science shows that the monarch needs that chance, and this proposed listing invites and builds on unprecedented public participation in shaping monarch conservation efforts,” she added

Context

Despite being recognized as needing federal protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) four years ago, the monarch butterfly waited behind dozens of other species facing more immediate threats.

The ESA, signed into law in 1973, is credited with helping to save the bald eagle, California condor and numerous other animals and plants from extinction. ESA protection makes it illegal to kill or harm species classified as threatened or endangered without a special permit.

By the numbers

The eastern migratory monarch population has declined by about 80% since the 1980s, while the western migratory population has dropped by more than 95%. The declines put the western populations at greater than 99% chance of extinction by 2080, according to the FWS.

The agency is proposing to designate 4,395 acres (1,780 hectares) in California as “critical habitat” for the butterflies. Federal agencies are prohibited from destroying or modifying areas with that designation.

What’s next

The public will have until March 12, 2025, to comment on the proposal to list the monarch butterfly. The service will then evaluate the comments and any additional information on the species to determine whether to list the monarch butterfly.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91247028/monarch-butterfly-threatened-species-status-us