Climate and environment updates: Global electricity demand projected to surge: Report

The Trump administration is pulling the plug, at least for now, on a U.S. Department of Transportation program that made it easier for states to install electric vehicle charging stations.

The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program provided federal funding to states for up to 80% of the cost to purchase and install non-proprietary EV chargers. The program also covered the operation and maintenance of the chargers and the cost of networking them to facilitate data collection.

In a letter to state transportation directors, the DOT said they were reviewing the program and "immediately suspending the approval of all State Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment plans for all fiscal years."

The letter added that "effective immediately, no new obligations may occur under the NEVI Formula Program until the updated final NEVI Formula Program Guidance is issued and new State plans are submitted and approved."

According to the DOT letter, that new guidance will be released in the spring. Until then, the $5 billion included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, one of former President Biden's signature achievements, will not be available.

The program aimed to build fast EV chargers available to all electric vehicles, regardless of model, and near major highways. According to data shared with The Washington Post by the data analytics firm Paren, 55 charging stations have been built so far.

NEVI projects already in the works can proceed as planned, according to the DOT letter.

-ABC News Climate Unit's Matthew Glasser

Nearly two-thirds of adults in the U.S. own a home. And for most of them, their house is their most significant financial asset. While the country's GDP is about $27 trillion, the residential real estate market is nearly double that at $50 trillion, according to Redfin.

However, a new report finds that those home values could decline dramatically because of human-amplified climate change. According to First Street, a climate risk financial modeling company, the housing market could lose $1.47 trillion by 2055 because of extreme weather events made worse by climate change. The company estimates that 85% of U.S. neighborhoods would be impacted by this decline "due to insurance pressures and shifting consumer demand."

Because of climate and weather damage and risks, the report found that insurance costs are rising much faster than mortgage payments. Between 2013 and 2022, insurance rates went from being around 7% to 8% of mortgage costs to over 20%. First Street also found that if insurers priced the actual risk and costs of these weather disasters into their premiums, prices would be nearly 30% higher.

First Street said Sun Belt states were at the most significant risk of climate-related housing devaluation. Moreover, Texas, Florida and California absorbed more than 40% of the $2.8 trillion in U.S. disaster costs since 1980, the report found.

The analysis identified Miami, Jacksonville, Tampa, New Orleans and Sacramento as the largest metro areas facing the highest spike in insurance premiums. They warned that because of these climate and weather risks, potential buyers may shy away from purchasing homes in certain areas, reducing the value of those properties.

"These findings underscore a fundamental shift in how Americans must now think about housing and community investment," said the report's authors. "The traditional drivers of real estate value—location, economy, and amenities—are being transformed by a new calculus that must account for long-term environmental vulnerability."

-ABC News climate unit's Matthew Glasser

It's not uncommon for the type of animals and plants in a particular area to change over time. It's called species turnover and happens naturally in ecosystems across the planet. However, a new study in Nature finds that climate change is accelerating the destabilization of animal populations worldwide.

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz; Rutgers University and across Europe studied more than 42,000 species living on land and in ocean and freshwater environments. They found species turnover was faster in locations experiencing more rapid temperature changes, including warming and cooling.

"It's like shuffling a deck of cards, and temperature change now is shuffling that deck faster and faster," said lead author Malin Pinsky, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, in a statement. "The worry is that eventually you start to lose some cards."

According to the study, nearly half of all species could be replaced per decade, and ecosystems could break down if the climate change trends continue.

The study also found that animals living in more diverse environments, with access to various habitats, are more likely to survive extreme temperature swings. For example, if an animal can walk from an open field to a forest to cool down, they are less susceptible to turnover. But not every species has that option.

The research team said human activities may also be impacting turnover. They believe land use changes, pollution and the introduction of invasive species intensify the effects of temperature changes on species replacement and theorize that these human actions are diminishing landscape diversity and increasing stress on species that are already close to their temperature limits.

-ABC News climate unit's Matthew Glasser

Last year, 2024, was the warmest year on record for the planet, easily breaking the previous record set just a year earlier.

Scientists say the unfolding El Niño event superimposed on long-term global warming is a primary driver of this huge spike in global surface temperatures since mid-2023. But the magnitude of the increase shocked many experts, leaving them somewhat puzzled about what else could be behind the remarkable rise.

NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite, PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem), is expected to provide new data to help scientists understand how changing levels of different atmospheric aerosols impact Earth's energy balance.

Read more here.

-ABC News meteorologist Dan Peck