
Zurich Resilience Solutions (ZRS), the commercial risk advisory and services unit of Zurich Insurance Group, has partnered with climate services provider and carbon project developer South Pole to launch a new climate change-related offering to companies.
According to Zurich, the joint offering will be initially available in the US, Germany and Switzerland. It will help businesses tackle both sides of the climate challenge at the same time, by helping them to define and execute their short- and long-term climate resilience objectives, as well as their net-zero goals. It will focus on measuring physical climate risk and emissions, helping establish a strategy to reduce each, and overseeing implementation of actions that will meet local regulatory and sustainability reporting requirements.
“Defining and deploying effective climate adaptation and mitigation strategies requires special knowhow and can be extremely complex and time-consuming, even more so for multinationals,” said Hanno Mijer, global head of Zurich Resilience Solutions. “Demand for climate resilience services has grown exponentially in recent years. Collaborating with South Pole will allow us to address climate-related risks holistically by supporting customers on their net-zero journey as well as resilience.”
Zurich said that companies must intensify their efforts to collectively reduce emissions to successfully transition to net zero and mitigate the environmental impacts. At the same time, companies have to prepare and adapt to the consequences of global warming and consider the current and future impacts of climate change on their business. According to the Climate Disclosure Project, the financial benefits of climate action are at least 15 times higher than the cost of risks.
Companies are also increasingly understanding that taking climate action is not only critical to managing their operational risks, but more stakeholders are expecting companies to transparently demonstrate how they are actively reducing their environmental impact and building resilience along their value chain, and, more importantly, to regularly report on the effectiveness of these measures.
“Companies that fail to demonstrate their progress in building resilience and reducing emissions will likely pay the price both reputationally and financially,” said Renat Heuberger, CEO of South Pole. “But knowing where to start can be difficult. We are pleased to combine South Pole’s best-in-class climate advisory with Zurich Resilience Solutions’ expertise in resilience to steer corporate leaders toward effective mitigation and adaptation efforts – both for commercial success and for climate protection.”
The Federal Reserve building is seen before the Federal Reserve board is expected to signal plans to raise interest rates in March as it focuses on fighting inflation in Washington, January 26, 2022.
Joshua Roberts | Reuters
The six largest banks in the U.S. have until the end of July to show the impact that climate change could have on their operations, according to details of a pilot program the Federal Reserve unveiled Tuesday.
Under the review, the institutions are to show the anticipated impact that events such as floods, wildfires, hurricanes, heat waves and droughts could have on their loan portfolios and commercial real estate holdings. A hypothetical scenario focuses on events in the Northeastern U.S.
Though the two exercises bear similarities, the climate scenario tests are considered separate from mandated bank stress tests that examine readiness in the case of financial and economic crises.
“The Fed has narrow, but important, responsibilities regarding climate-related financial risks – to ensure that banks understand and manage their material risks, including the financial risks from climate change,” Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr said. “The exercise we are launching today will advance the ability of supervisors and banks to analyze and manage emerging climate-related financial risks.”
The analysis is at least three years in the making.
A financial stability report in late 2020 first discussed the possibility of the Fed examining how prepared the institutions it oversees are for economic impacts from climate change. That came a year after Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard first brought up the issue.
However, Chairman Jerome Powell recently vowed the central bank would not become a “climate policymaker” despite the new program’s efforts.
The analysis takes a two-pronged approach, looking at a “physical risk” perspective, or the harm to people and property from unexpected climate-related events, and “transitions risks” associated with the costs of moving to a zero-emissions economy by 2050.
Participating banks include Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. The deadline for submissions is July 31, with a summary expected to be released publicly by the end of the year but will not include information about specific banks’ responses.
The report released Wednesday didn’t outline a more specific scenario that the banks should address. However, it did say it would entail examining the impact on residential and commercial real estate portfolios of “risk scenarios with different levels of severity” impacting the northeast.
In addition, banks are being asked to “consider the impact of additional physical risk shocks for their real estate portfolios in another region of the country.”
The transition risk portion is to focus on how corporate loans and commercial real estate would be hit by the move to hit net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The final report will focus on aggregate information provided by the banks about how they are incorporating climate risks into their financial plans. There won’t be estimates on total potential losses from the hypothetical events.
By: Jennifer Oldham for ProPublica (AP Storyshare)
Sheriff’s deputies driving 45 mph couldn’t outpace the flames. Dense smoke, swirling dust and flying plywood obscured the firestorm’s growth and direction, delaying evacuations.
Within minutes, landscaped islands in a Costco parking lot in Superior, Colorado, caught fire as structures became the inferno’s primary fuel. It consumed the Element Hotel, as well as part of a Tesla service center, a Target and the entire Sagamore neighborhood. Across a six-lane freeway, in the town of Louisville, flames rocketed through parks and climbed wooden fences, setting homes ablaze. They spread from one residence to the next in a mere eight minutes, reaching temperatures as high as 1,650 degrees.
On Dec. 30, 2021, more than 35,000 people in Superior and Louisville, as well as unincorporated Boulder County, fled the fire — some so quickly they left barefoot and without their pets. Firefighters abandoned miles of hose in neighborhood driveways to escape.
The Marshall Fire, the most destructive in Colorado history, killed two people and incinerated 1,084 residences and seven businesses within hours. Financial losses are expected to top $2 billion.
The blaze showed that Colorado and much of the West face a fire threat unlike anything they have seen. No longer is the danger limited to homes adjacent to forests. Urban areas are threatened, too.
Yet despite previous warnings of this new threat, ProPublica found Colorado’s response hasn’t kept pace. Legislative efforts to make homes safer by requiring fire-resistant materials in their construction have been repeatedly stymied by developers and municipalities, while taxpayers shoulder the growing cost to put out the fires and rebuild in their aftermath.

The Marshall Fire Burned Grasslands to the West Before Consuming Neighborhoods and Shopping Centers in Boulder County. Satellite imagery was taken in 2019, two years before the Marshall Fire, and obtained via NAIP. Credit: Map by Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
Many residents are unaware they are now at risk because federal and state wildfire forecasts and maps also haven’t kept pace with the growing danger to their communities. Indeed, some wildland fire forecasts model urban areas as “non-burnable,” even though the Marshall Fire proved otherwise.
The disaster put an exclamation point on what scientists, planners and federal officials warned for years: Communities outside the traditional wildland-urban interface, or WUI, are now vulnerable as a changing climate, overgrown forests and explosive development across the West fuel ever-unpredictable fire behavior. Fire experts define the WU zzz I, pronounced woo-ee, as areas where plants such as trees, shrubs and grasses are near, or mixed with, homes, power lines, businesses and other human development.
They now agree that instead of a threat confined to the WUI, the entire state, including areas far from forests, may be at risk of a conflagration.
“The Marshall Fire was a horrible, tragic event that served as a wake-up call for the rest of our state,” said state Rep. Lisa Cutter, a Democrat who represents mountain and foothill areas. “I don’t think we realized how much wildfire could impact communities that aren’t deep in the forest — it’s not something any of us are immune to.”

Data Source: Colorado Forest Atlas. Map by Lucas Waldron/ProPublica.
An early warning of the growing danger to suburban communities arrived in 2001. That year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies identified scores of Colorado municipalities adjacent to public lands as being at high risk of a wildland blaze-turned-urban conflagration. Some of these areas burned in the Marshall Fire.
A decade later, in 2012, another warning came, as an unprecedented weather-driven inferno, the Waldo Canyon Fire, destroyed several Colorado Springs neighborhoods.
Afterward, fire experts urged state lawmakers to adopt a model building code that communities in high-risk areas could enact. Such codes have been scientifically proven to reduce risk for residents and rescuers and to increase the odds structures will withstand a blaze by requiring fire-resistant materials on siding, roofs, decks and fences, along with mesh-covered vents that prevent embers from entering.
But lawmakers bowed to pressure from building and real estate lobbyists as well as municipal officials who demanded local control over private property.
Meanwhile, the number of new homes built in Colorado’s WUI — as defined by researchers several years ago — more than doubled between 1990 and 2020. And nationwide, the WUI is growing by 2 million acres a year. Homes in 70,000 communities worth $1.3 trillion are now within the path of a firestorm, according to a June report from the U.S. Fire Administration that featured photos of the Marshall Fire’s destruction.
Over 40,000 Residential Structures Were Built in the Areas Now Considered Wildland-Urban Interface in Boulder County Between 1990 and 2022. The location of each dot was determined by the geographic centroid of the parcel containing it. In rural areas, the dots may not reflect the exact location of the building. The WUI boundaries are from the 2017 Colorado Wildfire Risk Assessment, which are the most recent boundaries contained in the Colorado Forest Atlas. Credit: Data Source: Boulder County Assessor’s Office. Graphic by Lucas Waldron/ProPublica.
In the months that followed the Marshall Fire, there were again calls to consider a statewide building code. A last-minute amendment to a fire mitigation bill in May would have created a board to develop statewide building rules, but it was pulled after builders, real estate agents, municipalities and others opposed it.
It wasn’t the first time the state’s powerful building industry asserted its influence over policy. Whenever a wildfire bill comes to the state legislature, well-heeled lobbyists routinely represent the industry, records kept by the Colorado secretary of state show. The state’s culture of local control and the construction industry’s $25 billion annual contribution to the economy hampered lawmakers’ ability to find middle ground on a minimum statewide building code.
ProPublica’s review of legislation introduced from 2014 to 2022 found only 15 out of 77 wildfire-related bills focused primarily on helping homeowners mitigate their risk from fires. Most of the 15 proposals offered incentives to homeowners and communities through income tax deductions or grants — some of which required municipalities to raise matching funds — to clear vegetation around structures.
None called for mandatory building requirements in wildfire-prone areas, even as 15 of the 20 largest wildfires in state history have occurred since 2012.
The lack of uniform regulations has cost the Centennial State millions in federal grant money: The Federal Emergency Management Agency denied the state grants from the agency’s resilient infrastructure funds, which from fiscal 2020 to 2022 totaled $101 million.
Colorado remains one of only eight states without a minimum construction standard for homes.

Cherrywood Lane in Louisville. The Marshall Fire incinerated 550 homes and businesses in the city. Credit: Chet Strange, special to ProPublica.
Developers have also influenced municipalities’ recent decisions, as homes decimated by the Marshall Fire are rebuilt in Boulder County, and the cities of Superior and Louisville located within it. The debate has reflected difficult tradeoffs between the cost of making homes more fire-resistant — particularly in an era of high inflation and unpredictable supply chains — and residents’ tolerance for risk.
Lawmakers in Louisville, where 550 homes and businesses burned, voted to remove a fire sprinkler requirement for homes, citing cost, despite evidence such systems reduce the risk of dying in a home fire by 80%. The City Council also voted to allow residents to choose whether to follow new energy efficiency requirements estimated to add $5,000 to $100,000 to the cost of a new home.
By contrast, in unincorporated Boulder County, which lost 157 homes to the Marshall Fire, commissioners in June voted to require fire-resistant materials on all new and renovated homes. Before the inferno, the eastern grasslands were exempt. (Mountain residents, who since 1989 have been required to follow mitigation practices, have seen the effectiveness of such codes: Eight out of 10 of their homes survived the Fourmile Canyon Fire in 2010.)
In Superior, which lost 378 structures, the Board of Trustees voted down a proposed citywide WUI building code in May. After residents of the leveled Sagamore neighborhood requested they revisit their decision, trustees reconsidered in July.
The financial pressures facing Superior officials and their constituents were evident as they considered whether to require fire-resistant materials solely for homes destroyed by the Marshall Fire or for the entire city.
“This is all a huge cost we cannot bear,” said Robert Lousberg, a resident who wants to rebuild several homes. “I understood this is a once-in-a-lifetime fire.”
Some neighbors disagreed.
“Sagamore burned down in less than an hour — one of my neighbors ended up in the hospital after trying to escape the fire on foot — that’s the main reason we need these codes, to slow the spread of fire,” Dan Cole said. “We have an opportunity to build a more fire-resistant neighborhood right now, and it would be foolish and short sighted not to take it.”
Builders estimated that costs for tempered-glass windows, fire-resistant siding and other materials could reach $5,500 to $30,000 per home. Procuring the materials and labor to install them could delay rebuilding.
Like residents, town trustees were divided about whether the cost outweighed safety benefits to residents and first responders should there be another conflagration.
“To me, it’s unconscionable to have people rebuilding in an unsafe manner,” said Trustee Laura Skladzinski, who did not seek reelection last month. “I would rather have residents pay $20,000 now. If they cannot afford it, how are they going to be able to afford it when their house burns down?”
Some noted that most residents didn’t have enough insurance to cover the cost of rebuilding their homes.
Trustee Neal Shah said the city should have adopted tougher codes after the 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs, which prompted calls for a voluntary statewide building code that communities could institute requiring fire-resistant materials in homes.
“I fundamentally believe in WUI standards,” Shah said, “what I can’t solve is the math.”
The body voted 5-1 to institute the code, then added an opt-out clause for those rebuilding their residences.
A decade before the Marshall Fire, a blaze was burning in the mountains above Colorado Springs on a 101-degree June day. That afternoon a thunderstorm caused a sudden shift in the wind, pushing a wall of burning debris out of the Rocky Mountain foothills into the state’s second-largest city.
Firefighters fled the 750-foot-high fire front — as tall as a 53-floor building — as it chewed through pine, pinyon and juniper dried by a record-hot spring. Sixty-mile-per-hour gusts peeled back the door on a fire truck. Fist-sized embers rained down on the city’s Mountain Shadows community. The fire incinerated 79 homes per hour, or 1.3 per minute, over 5 ½ hours, a report found.

The Waldo Canyon Fire killed two people. Credit: Chet Strange, special to ProPublica
In the aftermath of the Waldo Canyon Fire, which destroyed 347 homes and killed two people, Colorado Springs drew lessons from which residences had survived and capitalized on fresh memories of burned neighborhoods to institute tougher building requirements.
Standing recently in the shade of a still-scorched tree behind her home, Patty Johnson described how her house was relatively unscathed, even as eight of her neighbors lost their residences. She credited ignition-resistant materials, including stucco walls, siding, a composite deck and a concrete tile roof. Drought-resistant landscaping also helped. Her family sold the home in September to move into a smaller place in the city.

Patty Johnson. Credit: Chet Strange, special to ProPublica
After-action reports found neighbors’ work clearing vegetation around homes helped firefighters save 82% of residences in the 28-square-mile burn area.
FEMA estimated that minimal expenditures to protect Colorado Springs neighborhoods had paid off. In Cedar Heights, $300,000 in mitigation had prevented about $77 million in losses.
“The Waldo Canyon Fire was shocking, but it could have been so much worse if the city of Colorado Springs had not spent decades getting ready,” said Molly Mowery, co-founder of the Community Wildfire Planning Center.
Even so, the fire reached 2,000 degrees and moved so fast it incinerated some homes with fire-resistant material and fire-proof safes inside.
Nevertheless, the city followed a 30-year pattern and took its lessons to heart to institute additional building requirements to fortify homes in wildfire-prone areas. Timing was everything, Mowery’s nonprofit concluded in a recently released analysis.
The city had done the same in 2002. With smoke still in the air following the Hayman Fire — which started about 35 miles northwest of the city and destroyed 600 structures — a coalition of fire officials, homeowners’ associations and local builders and roofing contractors devised rules that banned wood roofs on all new homes and repairs greater than 25% of the total roof area.
Similarly, after the Waldo Canyon Fire, as heavy machinery cleared charred neighborhoods, the city updated its code to increase the distance trees had to be from homes and require fire protection systems, ignition-resistant siding and decks, and double-paned windows for all new or reconstructed homes in hillside areas.
Fire officials used spatial technology to hone the city’s definition of the WUI. The tool identified a 32,655-acre area — one of the largest high-risk regions in the United States. The city recruited homeowners to educate neighbors in the threatened area about fire-resistant practices.
Peer pressure worked, said Ashley Whitworth, wildfire mitigation program administrator at the Colorado Springs Fire Department. If a homeowner’s property is flagged red on the city’s online risk assessment map (denoting it needs work), neighbors reach out to learn why they haven’t completed mitigation.

Ashley Whitworth. Credit: Chet Strange, special to ProPublica
Colorado Springs’ voters overwhelmingly approved the allocation of $20 million in city funds toward incentives to gird wildfire-prone properties.
Days after the vote in November 2021, the Marshall Fire unfolded 90 miles to the north across communities with little history of wildfire mitigation.
Scientists, some of whom lived in Boulder County and were evacuated, proclaimed it a “climate fire.” They cited the extreme weather that preceded it: Abnormally high levels of snow and rain in spring and summer had nurtured abundant 4-foot grasses that baked to a crisp during a historically dry fall. Chinook winds blasted the region for an unusual nine-hour period and propelled the firestorm. And even though there’s growing understanding that fire season is now year-round, no one believed a December blaze could ravage entire cities.
While it began as a wildfire in grassland, once it reached nearby communities it transformed into an urban conflagration — the type of fire that destroyed Chicago in 1871 and San Francisco in 1906 and that until the early 20th century consumed more property than any other type of natural disaster.
“Was this a wildland fire or an urban fire?” Sterling Folden, deputy chief of the Mountain View Fire Protection District, asked during a July legislative committee meeting. “I had five fire trucks in the entire downtown of Superior — I had 20 blocks on fire — I usually have that many for one house on fire.”
Whitworth, of the Colorado Springs Fire Department, said there were more lessons to learn about the threat of wildfire.
“The Marshall Fire was a really big hit for people here because it happened in December and it happened just like that,” Whitworth said. “Everyone said to me, ‘It could happen here,’ and I said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’”
With the 2023 legislative session days away, fire chiefs, county commissioners, scientists and planners are once again calling on Colorado lawmakers to institute statewide rules that mandate fire-resistant materials in high-risk areas.
Cutter, who will be sworn in as a state senator in January, is developing a bill that would require the state to create a WUI code board to write minimum fire-resistant building requirements. It’s patterned in part after the amendment that failed at the Capitol this spring.
Such laws save lives, said Mike Morgan, director of the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control. The 36-year fire service veteran cited studies from the nonprofit Fire Safety Research Institute and the federal National Institute of Standards and Technology showing that building codes work.
“Firefighters take extraordinary risk to protect lives and property,” he added. “If we start building communities and structures out of materials more resistive to fire, we are upping our odds of success — we’ve got to do something different and do it better.”
The insurance industry is also warning that if Colorado lawmakers and communities don’t reinforce homes against wildfire, mounting claims from blazes could put premiums out of reach for many. The industry supports a statewide building code.
“Unlike other disasters, wildfire is one of those risks there is much we can do from a mitigation standpoint to put odds at least in favor of that home surviving,” said Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association.
“We’ve got to get it done,” she added. “Colorado right now is at … a tipping point with concerns about keeping insurance here and keeping insurance available.”
But such rules won’t be adopted without a compromise among local control advocates, builders and fire officials.
Construction industry representatives who met with Cutter and Morgan recently said builders are wary of one-size-fits-all requirements imposed by the state. Together with the insurance industry and municipal governments, they have met the past few months seeking to influence the bill’s language.
“It’s important to make sure we match codes with risk,” said Ted Leighty, chief executive of the Colorado Association of Home Builders. His members “are not opposed to talking about what a code board might look like — if we were to adopt a model code that local governments could adopt to match their communities’ needs.”
The idea for such a board emerged after the Colorado Fire Commission received a letter from Gov. Jared Polis in July 2021.
The first-term Democrat, who was reelected in November, sent the missive following conflagrations in 2020 that exhibited unimaginable fire behavior: The 193,812-acre East Troublesome Fire traveled 25 miles overnight and incinerated 366 homes; and the 208,913-acre Cameron Peak Fire, which torched 461 structures, burned for four months despite firefighters’ efforts.
Polis wrote that legislators in 2021 had failed to “address a critical piece of the wildfire puzzle in Colorado: land use planning, development and building resiliency in the wildland-urban interface.”
Instead, lawmakers focused on fire response, restoration of burned lands and voluntary mitigation by communities.
In answer to Polis’ missive, a little-known subcommittee, which included state, county and city fire officials, met between August 2021 and April. The 51-member group agreed it’s time to rethink which communities are prone to wildfire, offering a new definition of the WUI: The group concluded “almost the entire state of Colorado falls within the WUI,” according to minutes from a Feb. 10 meeting, “which could make a strong argument for adopting a minimum code.”
Fire officials also countered the long-held belief that communities favor local control over building requirements. They pointed to a 2019 law that established a minimum energy code that local jurisdictions must adopt when they update local building codes. About 86% of the state’s 5 million residents now live in a community that mandates such measures.
“There is minimal evidence that people voluntarily regulate themselves,” committee members concluded, according to minutes of their Feb. 28 meeting.

Cherrywood Lane in Louisville. Credit: Chet Strange, special to ProPublica

Cherrywood Lane in Louisville. Credit: Chet Strange, special to ProPublica
A report on the Marshall Fire released in October by the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control noted how wooden fences abuting grasslands had accelerated the blaze’s spread, leading flames from the grass directly to homes. Firefighters also described fence pickets flying past at 80 mph and landing to start new fires.
This month, as homes were being rebuilt on Cherrywood Lane in Louisville, in one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, evidence remained of first responders’ frantic efforts to cut down fences to prevent them from spreading flames to neighboring homes.
New homes are going up across the 9-square-mile burn zone. A recent drive through the area revealed many are being rebuilt with the same kinds of fences. With no building code dictating that the fences be made of fire-resistant materials, homeowners are using flammable materials that have been standard in the past, unaware it will again put them at risk in the next blaze.
Wooden fences such as these touch homes and grasslands in communities up and down the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains.
Rebuilding without ignition-resistant barriers leaves the homes vulnerable to the next climate-driven wildfire, said Morgan, the state fire chief.
This month, with snow on the ground and temperatures in the 40s, another blaze ignited not far from where the Marshall Fire burned. Thirty-five-mile-per-hour winds spread the flames and forced evacuations before the threat subsided.
“I’ve heard people say the Marshall Fire was just a fluke,” he said. “I would disagree — there are literally thousands of communities along the Front Range of the Rockies from Canada to New Mexico subject to these Chinook winds multiple times a year, and when the conditions are right this can happen.”
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Solar panels create electricity on the roof of a house in Rockport, Massachusetts, U.S., June 6, 2022. Picture taken with a drone.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
When Josh Hurwitz decided to put solar power on his Connecticut house, he had three big reasons: To cut his carbon footprint, to eventually store electricity in a solar-powered battery in case of blackouts, and – crucially – to save money.
Now he’s on track to pay for his system in six years, then save tens of thousands of dollars in the 15 years after that, while giving himself a hedge against utility-rate inflation. It’s working so well, he’s preparing to add a Tesla-made battery to let him store the power he makes. Central to the deal: Tax credits and other benefits from both the state of Connecticut and from Washington, D.C., he says.
“You have to make the money work,” Hurwitz said. “You can have the best of intentions, but if the numbers don’t work it doesn’t make sense to do it.”
Hurwitz’s experience points up one benefit of the Inflation Reduction Act that passed in August: Its extension and expansion of tax credits to promote the spread of home-based solar power systems. Adoption is expected to grow 26 percent faster because of the law, which extends tax credits that had been set to expire by 2024 through 2035, says a report by Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industry Association.
Those credits will cover 30 percent of the cost of the system – and, for the first time, there’s a 30 percent credit for batteries that can store newly-produced power for use when it’s needed.
“The main thing the law does is give the industry, and consumers, assurance that the tax credits will be there today, tomorrow and for the next 10 years,” said Warren Leon, executive director of the Clean Energy States Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of state government energy agencies. “Rooftop solar is still expensive enough to require some subsidies.”
California’s solar energy net metering decision
Certainty has been the thing that’s hard to come by in solar, where frequent policy changes make the market a “solar coaster,” as one industry executive put it. Just as the expanded federal tax credits were taking effect, California on Dec. 15 slashed another big incentive allowing homeowners to sell excess solar energy generated by their systems back to the grid at attractive rates, scrambling the math anew in the largest U.S. state and its biggest solar-power market — though the changes do not take effect until next April.
Put the state and federal changes together, and Wood Mackenzie thinks the California solar market will actually shrink sharply in 2024, down by as much as 39%. Before the Inflation Reduction Act incentives were factored in, the consulting firm forecast a 50% drop with the California policy shift. Residential solar is coming off a historic quarter, with 1.57 GW installed, a 43% increase year over year, and California a little over one-third of the total, according to Wood Mackenzie.

For potential switchers, tax credits can quickly recover part of the up-front cost of going green. Hurwitz took the federal tax credit for his system when he installed it in 2020, and is preparing to add a battery now that it, too, comes with tax credits. Some contractors offer deals where they absorb the upfront cost – and claim the credit – in exchange for agreements to lease back the system.
Combined with savings on power homeowners don’t buy from utilities, the tax credits can make rooftop solar systems pay for themselves within as little as five years – and save $25,000 or more, after recovering the initial investment, within two decades.
“Will this growth have legs? Absolutely,” said Veronica Zhang, portfolio manager of the Van Eck Environmental Sustainability Fund, a green fund not exclusively focused on solar. “With utility rates going up, it’s a good time to move if you were thinking about it in the first place.”
How to calculate installation costs and benefits
Here is how the numbers work.
Nationally, the cost for solar in 2022 ranges from $16,870 to $23,170, after the tax credit, for a 10-kilowatt system, the size for which quotes are sought most often on EnergySage, a Boston-based quote-comparison site for solar panels and batteries. Most households can use a system of six or seven kilowatts, EnergySage spokesman Nick Liberati said. A 10-12 kilowatt battery costs about $13,000 more, he added.
There’s a significant variation in those numbers by region, and by the size and other factors specific to the house, EnergySage CEO Vikram Aggarwal said. In New Jersey, for example, a 7-kilowatt system costs on average $20,510 before the credit and $15,177 after it. In Houston, it’s about $1,000 less. In Chicago, that system is close to $2,000 more than in New Jersey. A more robust 10-kilowatt system costs more than $31,000 before the credit around Chicago, but $26,500 in Tampa, Fla. All of these average prices are as quoted by EnergySage.
The effectiveness of the system may also vary because of things specific to the house, including the placement of trees on or near the property, as we found out when we asked EnergySage’s online bid-solicitation system to look at specific homes.
The bids for one suburban Chicago house ranged as low as $19,096 after the federal credit and as high as $30,676.
Offsetting those costs are electricity savings and state tax breaks that recover the cost of the system in as little as 4.5 years, according to the bids. Contractors claimed that power savings and state incentives could save as much as another $27,625 over 20 years, on top of the capital cost.
Alternatively, consumers can finance the system but still own it themselves – we were quoted interest rates of 2.99 to 8.99 percent. That eliminates consumers’ up-front cost, but cuts into the savings as some of the avoided utility costs go to pay off interest, Aggarwal said.
The key to maximizing savings is to know the specific regulations in your state – and get help understanding often-complex contracts, said Hurwitz, who is a physician.
Energy storage and excess power
Some states have more generous subsidies than others, and more pro-consumer rules mandating that utilities pay higher prices for excess power that home solar systems create during peak production hours, or even extract from homeowners’ batteries.
California had among the most generous rules of all until this week. But state utility regulators agreed to let utilities pay much less for excess power they are required to buy, after power companies argued that the rates were too high, and raised power prices for other customers.
Wood Mackenzie said the details of California’s decision made it look less onerous than the firm had expected. EnergySage says the payback period for California systems without a battery will be 10 years instead of six after the new rules take effect in April. Savings in the years afterward will be about 60 percent less, the company estimates. Systems with a battery, which pay for themselves after 10 years, will be little affected because their owners keep most of their excess power instead of selling it to the utility, according to EnergySage.
“The new [California rules] certainly elongate current payback periods for solar and solar-plus-storage, but not by as much as the previous proposal,” Wood Mackenzie said in the Dec. 16 report. “By 2024, the real impacts of the IRA will begin to come to fruition.”
The more expensive power is from a local utility, the more sense home solar will make. And some contractors will back claims about power savings with agreements to pay part of your utility bill if the systems don’t produce as much energy as promised.
“You have to do your homework before you sign,” Hurwitz said. “But energy costs always go up. That’s another hidden incentive.”
Regulators set heavy restrictions for new natural gas lines, but stop short of eliminating subsidies
Those concerns led California to become the first state to eliminate the subsidies earlier this year, citing a statewide effort to shift buildings away from fossil fuels. The state’s ratepayers will also save $164 million per year, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.
Colorado appeared poised to follow California’s lead. Utility regulators proposed eliminating the subsidies last year as they followed through on legislation to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of natural gas utilities.
The plan became a focal point over 14 months of heated and complex deliberations before governor-appointed utility commissioners. Homebuilders and Colorado’s largest natural gas companies fought to preserve the subsidies. Meanwhile, environmental groups and ratepayer advocates pushed the state to stick to its original proposal.
The commission ended up opting for a middle path. Instead of eliminating the subsidies, it created a new equation to determine the size of the subsidy going forward.
Parks Barroso, an attorney for the environmental group Western Resource Advocates, said the calculation is based on the principle that developers and new customers — not ratepayers — should pay to add buildings to the natural gas system. The equation includes the cost to lay new lines to homes and expand existing pipelines to handle any new demand. In addition, it factors in the social cost of carbon, a term that describes the estimated financial damage caused by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
“The decision does not eliminate line extensions, but it recognizes we can’t continue to expand the gas system if we want to meet our decarbonization targets,” Barroso said.
Consumer advocates were generally pleased with the decision. Cindy Schonhaut, the director of the Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate, said it makes sense to require gas companies to prove the benefits of their plans exceed the cost to ratepayers.
“That’s what we wanted for consumers, so it’s a good outcome,” Schonhaut said.
Colorado gas utilities must submit plans for new allowances by the end of 2024, but companies tend to include the subsidies in separate proposals to increase gas rates and build new infrastructure. Any plan asking for an allowance must follow the new rules by May 2023.
In a filing before the commission, the Home Builders Association of Colorado argued eliminating the subsidies would increase housing prices. It did not immediately respond to CPR News’ request for comment.
The recent decision also codifies climate targets the legislature set for gas utilities, requiring a 4 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 and a 22 percent cut by 2030 compared to a 2015 baseline.
To hit the benchmarks, companies must submit so-called “Clean Heat Plans” by the end of next year. Those proposals can include projects to increase energy efficiency, switch buildings to electric heating systems and mix zero-carbon hydrogen into the natural gas supply.
Ford F-150 Lightning trucks manufactured at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn Michigan.
Courtesy: Ford Motor Co.
DETROIT – About 65% of Ford Motor’s dealers have agreed to sell electric vehicles as the company invests billions to expand production and sales of the battery-powered cars and trucks, CEO Jim Farley said Monday.
About 1,920 of Ford’s nearly 3,000 dealers in the U.S. agreed to sell EVs, according to Farley. He said roughly 80% of those dealers opted for the higher level of investment for EVs.
Ford offered its dealers the option to become “EV-certified” under one of two programs — with expected investments of $500,000 or $1.2 million. Dealers in the higher tier, which carries upfront costs of $900,000, receive “elite” certification and be allocated more EVs.
Ford, unlike crosstown rival General Motors, is allowing dealers to opt out of selling EVs and continue to sell the company’s cars. GM has offered buyouts to Buick and Cadillac dealers that don’t want to invest to sell EVs.
Dealers who decided not to invest in EVs may do so when Ford reopens the certification process in 2027.
“We think that the EV adoption in the U.S. will take time, so we wanted to give dealers a chance to come back,” Farley said during an Automotive News conference.
Ford’s plans to sell EVs have been a point of contention since the company split off its all-electric vehicle business earlier this year into a separate division known as Model e. Farley said the automaker and its dealers needed to lower costs, increase profits and deliver better, more consistent customer sales experiences.
Farley on Monday also reiterated that a direct-sales model is estimated to be thousands of dollars cheaper for the automaker than the auto industry’s traditional franchised system.
Wall Street analysts have largely viewed direct-to-consumer sales as a benefit to optimize profit. However, there have been growing pains for Tesla, which uses the sales model, when it comes to servicing its vehicles.
Ford’s current lineup of all-electric vehicles includes the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup, Mustang Mach-E crossover and e-Transit van. The automaker is expected to release a litany of other EVs globally under a plan to invest tens of billion of dollars in the technologies by 2026.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
It’s not just cars that will be going through energy transition in the years ahead. The parking lots where EVs recharge are a growing focus of construction efforts linked to climate change and carbon reduction.
A law approved in France last month requires that parking lots with 80 or more spaces be covered by solar panels within the next five years. For the biggest parking lots, those with more than 400 spaces, three years has been granted to have at least half of the parking lot’s surface area covered by solar.
Similar renewable energy design ideas are expected to gain more market share in the U.S. if not necessarily through a federal mandate.
“You’ll see a lot of the same stuff that you’re seeing in France and other countries, but it probably won’t necessarily play out the same way, in terms of federal action versus state action,” said Bill Abolt, vice president and lead of energy business for infrastructure consulting firm AECOM.
As local and state governments create mandates for renewable energy deployment, and the federal government takes an incentive-based approach to encourage climate technology through measures like the Inflation Reduction Act, major corporations are making their own commitments to solar power.
Target, Home Depot, Walmart and renewable energy
Target revamped one of its California stores with solar panel carports this spring. Home Depot is making efforts to have all of its stores use only renewable energy by 2030, while Walmart hopes to achieve this by 2040. These efforts won’t only come through producing renewable power on-site — procurement of renewable energy from utility-scale projects is among strategic options to meet these goals — but investing in solar power for store locations will become more prevalent.
“You have a lot of significant companies that have stepped up and made commitments to renewable energy and similar things with local governments and institutions. So, there’s no doubt that that level of investment has accelerated the development of technology, the deployment of more cost effective solar,” Abolt said.
The cost to install solar has dropped by more than 60% over the past decade, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
“There’s no doubt that the cost curve of solar gets better and better all the time and will continue to do so. Private business has done a lot, and we’re seeing even more private investment likely to happen as a result,” Abolt said.
Global commercial real estate company CBRE is partnering with renewable energy company Altus Power to work with clients including many Fortune 500 companies on solar projects.
“The topics that are top of mind for these corporations right now are decarbonization and energy efficiency and energy resiliency,” said Lars Norell, co-founder and co-CEO of Altus Power. “The No. 1 answer is building-sited clean energy,” he said.

Norell said it has now become possible for businesses of all sizes to consider renewable energy projects.
“Something that Walmart or IKEA or Amazon does, smaller family-owned businesses come to us and say ‘Should we do the same thing? Could our roof hold solar?’ The answer in almost all those cases is absolutely yes,” he said.
Public expectations and pressure from boards are key factors in why major corporations tend to act quicker than smaller companies when it comes to renewable energy. “In many cases, smaller companies don’t have quite such an audience that is expecting them to act, but many of them are acting sort of out of self-interest or because they would like to save money,” Norell said.
Solar power and commercial real estate
Solar carports and rooftop solar are the primary solar designs being adopted in the world of commercial real estate.
“We find that there is almost no debate around the wisdom of putting solar in a parking lot,” Norell said. “We believe that rooftop solar and carport solar are going to be easier for most communities to not only accept but embrace as a way to make clean energy.”
In recent years, an increasing number of solar projects have been built over commercial parking lots, and state governments have created incentives specifically for solar carports, including the 2018 Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target, and the Maryland Energy Administration Solar Canopy Grant Program, which provides funding to incentivize the use of solar carports and parking garages, with EV chargers included on site. It has provided up to $250,000 per solar carport project, creating an incentive for commercial businesses to invest in the projects.
“Increasing power prices and more government support, like in France where they mandated it, we think will mean that more parking lots are going to have carports,” Norell said.
Commercial retail centers and logistics buildings are prime targets for solar. Commercial retail centers, like grocery stores, consume higher levels of energy and often feature big parking lots. Logistics buildings like warehouses feature large rooftops that are optimal places to implement rooftop solar energy.
Altus Power forecasts that most buildings will have a solar power system over the next decade.
With the growing production and consumption of EVs — the International Energy Agency reported that U.S. electric car sales doubled in market share to 4.5% in 2021, reaching 630,000 EVs sold — solar-powered commercial businesses become more beneficial to consumers requiring EV chargers in parking lots.
The same will be the case for warehouses and distribution centers.
“Once we start getting good at having electrical-powered van fleets and trucks, all those trucks come to those logistical buildings, and that’s an excellent spot to put up fleet chargers, so that when the truck is busy … we take the opportunity to charge its electrical battery as well,” Norell said. “We can charge it with clean electricity because we’re making solar power on the roof, and that’s then going into the truck.”
Company expands crop set into new varietals of premium snacking tomatoes
Company announces planting of 360,000 tomato plants at new 60-acre Richmond, Ky., farm as it works to quadruple number of farms in 2022
MOREHEAD, Ky., Nov. 22, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — AppHarvest, Inc. (NASDAQ: APPH, APPHW), a sustainable food company, public benefit corporation and Certified B Corp building some of the world’s largest high-tech indoor farms to grow affordable, nutritious fruits and vegetables at scale while providing good jobs in Appalachia announced today it has kicked off the third season of harvesting ahead of schedule with commercial shipments of tomatoes from its 60-acre high-tech indoor farm in Morehead, Ky.
Martha Stewart, an AppHarvest board member, hosted a press conference for the company’s first harvest of tomatoes in January of 2021. Since that time, the company has opened two additional high-tech indoor farms—a 30-acre farm in Somerset, Ky., for strawberries and cucumbers and a 15-acre farm in Berea, Ky., for salad greens—both of which are currently shipping produce to top national grocery store chains, restaurants and food service outlets through its distributor, Mastronardi Produce. AppHarvest is shipping strawberries under the “WOW® Berries” brand from nearly 1 million strawberry plants and a variety of salad greens for the “Queen of Greens®” washed-and-ready-to-eat salad packs.
As AppHarvest works to quadruple its number of farms in 2022, the company continues construction on a fourth facility, a 60-acre farm in Richmond, Ky., that will grow tomatoes. While finalizing construction, half the Richmond farm has been planted with 360,000 Campari and Maranice varieties of “Tomatoes on the Vine,” which are expected to start harvesting in January of 2023.
“With the experience of two seasons of harvests, the Morehead farm is seeing significantly improved quality and yield, which largely can be attributed to task completion rates of crop care specialists meeting and sometimes exceeding 100% of goal,” said AppHarvest Founder & CEO Jonathan Webb. “We’re developing a tenured workforce and seeing benefits of promoting from within to help drive efficiency and quality from folks who have grown the business with us from the ground up.” The AppHarvest team has continued to enhance training with routine quality checks of crop care tasks, which facilitates quick retraining if needed.
For its third season of harvesting, the AppHarvest Morehead farm has further diversified its crop set adding snacking tomatoes sold under the Sunset brand as “Flavor Bombs®” and “Sugar Bombs®.” Morehead is growing roughly 50% beefsteak tomatoes, 25% Tomatoes on the Vine and 25% snacking tomatoes.
According to USDA reports, the value of U.S. fruit and vegetable imports rose to a record level in 2021 and has been projected to keep increasing in 2022. Changing weather patterns—ranging from mega-drought in the Southwest of the U.S. to more frequent flooding to catastrophic wind events—are making it harder than ever for open-field farmers to predict the duration of their growing seasons and to have conditions that result in a quality harvest. Major food retailers have demonstrated increasing interest in high-tech indoor farms for their ability to de-risk fruit and vegetable production with a more climate-resilient, more sustainable year-round growing solution that uses far fewer resources. Europe, a pioneer in the industry, is estimated to have nearly 520,000 acres of CEA production compared to an estimated 6,000 acres in the United States.
About AppHarvest
AppHarvest is a sustainable food company in Appalachia developing and operating some of the world’s largest high-tech indoor farms with robotics and artificial intelligence to build a reliable, climate-resilient food system. AppHarvest’s farms are designed to grow produce using sunshine, rainwater and up to 90% less water than open-field growing, all while producing yields up to 30 times that of traditional agriculture and preventing pollution from agricultural runoff. AppHarvest currently operates its 60-acre flagship farm in Morehead, Ky., producing tomatoes, a 15-acre indoor farm for salad greens in Berea, Ky., and a 30-acre farm for strawberries and cucumbers in Somerset, Ky. The company continues construction on a 60-acre indoor farm for tomatoes in Richmond, Ky. The four-farm network that is expected to be operational by the end of 2022 consists of 165 acres. For more information, visit https://www.appharvest.com/.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements included in this news release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally are accompanied by words or phrases such as “will,” “estimate,” “work to,” “continue,” “expect,” “plan,” and similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. All statements, other than statements of present or historical fact included in this news release, regarding AppHarvest’s intention to build high-tech CEA farms, AppHarvest’s expectation of the landscape of the fruit and vegetables market, the economic impact of changing weather patterns on production for open-field farmers, the anticipated benefits of and production at such facilities, timing and availability of produce, AppHarvest’s future financial performance, AppHarvest’s growth and evolving business plans and strategy, ability to capitalize on commercial opportunities, future operations, estimated financial position and cash flow, projected costs, prospects, plans and objectives of management are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on various assumptions, whether or not identified in this news release, and on the current expectations of AppHarvest’s management and are not predictions of actual performance. These forward-looking statements are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to serve as, and must not be relied on as, a guarantee, an assurance, a prediction, or a definitive statement of fact or probability. Actual events and circumstances are difficult or impossible to predict and will differ from assumptions. Many actual events and circumstances are beyond the control of AppHarvest. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in the company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC by AppHarvest on Nov. 7, 2022, under the heading “Risk Factors,” and other documents AppHarvest has filed, or that AppHarvest will file, with the SEC. If any of these risks materialize or our assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. In addition, forward-looking statements reflect AppHarvest’s expectations, plans, or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this press release. AppHarvest anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause its assessments to change. However, while AppHarvest may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, AppHarvest specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing AppHarvest’s assessments of any date subsequent to the date of this news release. Accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed upon the forward-looking statements.
Media Contact: Darla Turner, Darla.Turner@appharvest.com
Investor Contact: AppHarvestIR@appharvest.com
Photos accompanying this announcement are available at:
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/57ce2106-7702-4c95-ab76-bc38e8f9c217
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2583d5ca-ce79-49be-bc70-c88f92f0e653
VIETNAM, October 28 –
NEW YORK — Việt Nam and other countries shared their views on the important role played by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in handling international disputes peacefully, at a plenary session of the 77th United Nations General Assembly on October 27 (US time).
The court has significantly contributed to promoting the observance of the UN Charter and international law, as well as sustainable development, peace, security and stability in the world, they said.
Việt Nam and some other countries, including Vanuatu, proposed the initiative of asking for the court’s consultancy regarding nations’ obligations on climate change.
Ambassador Đặng Hoàng Giang, permanent representative of Việt Nam to the UN, stressed that climate change has remained a challenge to the international community and threatens the lives of people in coastal countries and small island nations.
Many response measures have been taken, including commitments to net zero carbon emissions, yet climate change has still been developing complicatedly, he said.
The diplomat called for stronger actions in this regard, saying the responsibility and obligations of countries should be identified in accordance with relevant international conventions, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The ICJ, also known as the World Court, is the main judicial organ of the UN. It was established in June 1945 by the Charter of the UN and began work in April 1946.
The court’s role is to settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by states and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorised UN organs and specialised agencies. The court decides disputes between countries, based on the voluntary participation of the states concerned. If a state agrees to participate in a proceeding, it is obligated to comply with the court’s decision.
The court is composed of 15 judges elected to nine-year terms of office by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council. — VNS
After California, Colorado could become the second state to stop subsidizing natural gas connections
“What’s cool is you can make this home self-powered,” Myers said. “You don’t have to rely on anything other than the electricity from rooftop solar panels.”
State utility regulators are now considering a proposal to nudge other builders away from natural gas. It takes aim at a long-standing financial practice: In Colorado and most other states, anyone who pays a gas bill helps fund incentives to connect new homes to the larger gas system. In effect, it means ratepayers and developers share the cost of adding people to the gas network.
Policymakers designed the subsidy decades ago to distribute the cost of expanding energy access. Now it’s getting a second look as fossil fuels ravage the atmosphere. California became the first state to eliminate its subsidies earlier this year, citing rising energy prices and its ambitious goals to reduce climate-warming emissions.
Colorado could soon become the second. After releasing the proposal earlier this year, the state’s Public Utilities Commission is set to make a final decision by the beginning of December.

Fueling a fight over housing and energy costs
That plan has sparked a debate over Colorado’s rising cost of living. Opponents include the state’s largest utility companies and housing developers, which argue eliminating the incentives leaves prospective home buyers facing even higher prices.
“All that does is add costs,” said Ted Leighty, the CEO of the Colorado Association of Home Builders. “Right now, housing affordability is one of the greatest challenges we’ve ever seen in Colorado.”
Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest natural gas and electricity company, currently provides a $741 incentive to developers to link a new home to the larger natural gas system. It later recovers those costs with fees from ratepayers. An Xcel spokesperson said the existing policy “maintains customer choice and affordability in new homes and businesses.”
But environmental groups are skeptical that the incentives impact property prices. Market dynamics play a far greater role in determining housing prices, said Kiki Velez, a green building advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Since most people aren’t buying new homes, Velez said rising energy costs are a far more relevant concern. In California, state utility regulators estimated eliminating the incentives will save ratepayers $165 million a year. Colorado regulators don’t have similar estimates, but Xcel Energy spends about $10 million annually to help connect about 14,000 new homes to its gas system.
“It’s bad for customers, it’s costing them money, and it’s also completely contradictory to our climate goals,” Velez said.
Environmental groups have further argued there’s no longer a reason for the incentives, which were originally meant to expand energy access and spread the fixed costs of maintaining the larger natural gas system.
Those social benefits may have once justified additional costs for all gas customers, said Mike Henchen, who works for the carbon-free building program at RMI, a clean-energy think tank previously known as the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Now he thinks climate change has shifted the equation. If governments follow the advice of scientists, then they will pass policies to encourage residents to shift from gas to electric appliances. The recently signed Inflation Reduction Act could be an early example. Meanwhile, Henchen noted electric appliances, like heat pumps to provide heating and cooling, are getting better and dropping in price.
“If the idea at some point was that natural gas is an essential service to get to as many people as possible, that’s just no longer true,” Henchen said.

The practical points of selling all-electric homes
On the tour of the Sonders development, executives with Thrive Builders avoided the tense politics around natural gas. Prospective buyers in hardhats instead heard about potential consumer benefits of electric appliances, like avoiding indoor air pollutants and the potential for lower energy bills.
Lee and Beth Zimmerman didn’t need much convincing. After moving to Fort Collins to be closer to their grandkids, they rented a home with an electric induction stove. They had to buy new pots and pans that worked with the cooktop but grew to like it over time.
“I think electric is definitely the way I would go, whether it’s this builder, this house or somebody else,” Lee Zimmerman said.
The couple agreed they’re willing to pay extra to ditch natural gas. Whether all-electric homes are more expensive in general is an open question. In their comments to utility commissioners, KB Home, one of Colorado’s largest builders, estimated electric appliances could add $27,000 in construction costs for a standard single-family home. Separate estimates from environmental groups — like RMI and the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project — show they cost less upfront and save thousands over time due to energy savings.
Gene Myers, the chief sustainability officer for Thrive, acknowledged their all-electric homes currently come at a premium. He thinks that’s fine since the Sonders development is aimed at aging baby boomers with disposable income.
Myers doesn’t know what Colorado utility regulators will do about natural gas connections in the short term. In the long term, he suspects local and state governments will recognize the construction industry, by one estimate, causes 40 percent of climate-warming emissions.
He suspects regulations requiring a shift from gas will follow. Myers wants his company to be ready to shape and handle the new rules.
“To me, it’s inevitable,” he said.