When the tide gets exceptionally high in Charleston, South Carolina, coastal streets start to run with seawater. Some yards become ponds, and residents pull on rain boots. The city also gets a lot of rain. After homes in one low-lying neighborhood flooded three times in four years, the city offered to buy out 32 flood-prone town homes and turn the land back into open space that can be used for managing future floodwater. It’s a strategy coastal cities from Virginia to California are contemplating more often as tidal flooding increases with sea level rise. Cities all along the U.S. coasts…

The Department of Energy has taken the long awaited first step toward implementing the statutorily required phaseout of inefficient incandescent light bulbs. The phaseout was due to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2020 but was rolled back due to illegal actions taken by the Trump administration. Each month of additional delay results in the ongoing sales of inefficient incandescent light bulbs costing consumers nearly $300 million in lost utility bill savings over the bulbs’ lifetime and result in another 800,000 tons of easily avoided carbon emissions, according to a recent analysis by the Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP). In…

COVID-19 and the resulting economic downturn have turned the existing housing crisis from bad to worse. Renters in more than 8 million homes are behind on payments, and as they struggle to make ends meet, utility bills further burden tenants. Compounding this problem is a lack of energy efficiency in rental homes, which is both an equity and environmental crisis. On May 10, the City of Burlington, Vermont, took a step that will help renters to both lower their costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Burlington City Council unanimously approved an ordinance that sets minimum energy efficiency standards for…