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If you want to buy an electric vehicleor solar panels or a heat pump or home batterytheres 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. Heres 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, its a good time to get an EV. Models qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500 if theyre assembled in North America and meet American sourcing requirements for battery parts and critical minerals. Theres 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. Thats 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 doesnt 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 its 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 creditsuntil the 2030s, in this case. Geothermal heating Deadline: December 31 Even if you live in a climate thats 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. Theyre 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, lcal 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.”
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E-Commerce
An aging office complex stands at the center of one of the most consequential political battles of the moment. The drama surrounds President Donald Trump’s desire to oust Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell ahead of his term’s conclusion in May 2026, a shakeup Trump has been calling for publicly for months in the face of Powell’s unwillingness to lower interest rates. As the head of an independent federal body, Powell’s job is not legally within the president’s power to touch, unless it can be proven that the chairperson has engaged in abusive or fraudulent behavior. In that case Powell could be fired for cause. That’s why a spotlight has suddenly been placed on a 1930s-era office complex. The buildings in question are the Marriner S. Eccles building and 1951 Constitution Avenue, two adjacent buildings on the National Mall that are part of the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Federal Reserve Board, which Powell oversees. The buildings have been undergoing a major renovation project in recent years, with an estimated cost of $2.5 billion. Trump and members of his administration have zeroed in on the cost of the project (which has risen since it was first proposed in 2017), claiming there are luxurious and unnecessary parts of the design that prove Powell is mismanaging the Fed. The Trump administration is now undertaking a kind of retroactive design review, and making a case that the renovation’s scope has spiraled beyond the public interest, and that Powell should be held accountable. Powell maintains that the project is in compliance with all laws and standards. The renovation stands in the middle, and the future of U.S. monetary policy is at stake. [Image: National Capital Planning Commission] Why the Trump administration is targeting the Feds renovation Trump wants Powell out, and the Fed’s renovation project is a potential avenue to achieve that goal. In a July 10 letter to Powell, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, called the project an “ostentatious overhaul.” He wrote that the White House has “serious concerns” with the scope of the renovation, citing specific elements, including private dining rooms, rooftop garden terraces, water features, marble decor, and a private elevator. A week later, Powell responded to Vought with his own letter outlining the reasons for the renovation’s high cost, noting that the buildings in question have not undergone comprehensive renovations since they were built in the 1930s. “Both buildings were in need of significant structural repairs and other updates to make the buildings safe, healthy, and effective places to work,” Powell wrote. He also addressed Vought’s specific concerns about the “ostentatious” parts of the design, which, Powell notes, are either merely anodyne design elements that have been misinterpreted as luxury amenities or simply not part of the project at all. Powell explains that the “rooftop garden terraces” Vought targets are either the lawn that will sit above new underground parking or common vegetated roof areas intended to handle stormwater and improve building efficiency. The “private dining rooms” in Vought’s letter are actually conference rooms sometimes used for mealtime meetings. The “private elevator” does not exist, and upgrades are being made to existing elevators for accessibility reasons. “There are no special, private, or VIP elevators being constructed as part of the project,” Powell writes. This showdown between the two sides continues. What the Fed’s renovation entails The $2.5 billion Fed renovation project is a deep upgrading of the guts of the two buildings. The Eccles building was completed in 1937 as the original headquarters of the Fed, and covers 275,000 square feet in the footprint of an H shape. The Constitution Avenue building, originally used by the U.S. Public Health Service, was completed in 1932; it covers 126,000 square feet in the footprint of an E shape. Both are registered historic buildings, and no major renovations have been conducted on either since their original construction. Work to bring the buildings up to date includes a complete replacement of the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems, as well as the fire detection and suppression systems. Plumbing and electrical systems needed upgrading, and lead and asbestos had to be removed. In order to comply with modern building, safety, and accessibility codes, many upgrades had to be made to the interior layout and spaces of the two buildings. [Image: National Capital Planning Commission] Each will have its overall floor area expanded. The Eccles building is getting five-story infill additions in the two open sections of the its H-shape; the Constitution Avenue building will get its own five-story addition, turning its E shape ino a blocky 8. The most complex part of the project is underground. Because Washington, D.C., has strict height limits that cap most buildings at 130 feet, expanding buildings often means building downward. The Fed’s renovation involves rebuilding the foundations and expanding the usable space below grade in both buildings, an especially tricky prospect in D.C.’s swamp-like conditions. The renovation launched in 2017, during Trump’s first term. Design concepts were approved in stages in the following years, with rules and oversight from the National Capital Planning Commission, the Commission on Fine Arts, and the National Park Service, among others. It was designed as a joint venture between Quinn Evans Architects and CallisonRTKL, the latter of which is now part of the large international design and engineering firm Arcadis. (Both firms referred questions about the project to the Federal Reserve Board, which did not respond to an interview request.) The final design was approved in September 2021. Work has been underway on the complex since it was officially approved by the National Capital Planning Commission, the body that oversees urban planning issues in the District of Columbia (and which has come to play an important role in the current drama surrounding the renovation). The upgrades will allow the two buildings to consolidate about 1,750 of the Fed’s roughly 3,400 employees, reducing the need to lease external building space. The project was initially estimated to cost $1.7 billion. [Image: National Capital Planning Commission] Why the cost has risen It’s very common for large building and renovation projects to see their costs rise over time, particularly those involving older buildings that have historic preservation protections in place. And for a project that was proposed before the pandemic, approved during the pandemic, and has largely been built after the pandemic, material and labor costs have surged significantly. In the eight years since the project was originally approved by the Fed Board, the price of steel, for example, has skyrocketed, hitting a peak in 2021, just before construction started. Once work got underway, renovation teams also discovered more asbestos and lead in the building than originally anticipated; naturally, remediation has added to the cost. Builders also found the water table beneath the underground parking construction was higher than expected, leading to additional excavation and shoring to keep the building’s foundation stable. [Image: National Capital Planning Commission] These issues are not ideal, but also not surprising. The Trump administration, though, has suggested that the rise in project costs is actually due to the private dining rooms and extensive marble work Vought outlined in his letter to Powell. During Trump’s first term, some of his appointees to the architecture-focused Commission of Fine Arts called for additional marble to be used on the building’s facade. The Fed itself had called for more glass to be used in the building’s expansiona gesture the architects describe as creating “a literal connection to the Boards goals for more openness and transparency as an organization.” Though Powell has dismissed Vought’s accusations as false or misinterpretations of the plan, the suggestion of wasteful spending lingers and is being used to explore whether the project has violated the rules of the National Capital Planning Commission. Trump recently replaced three members of that commission with White House insiders, including one of Vought’s aides, and as Politico reported, the renovation became an unexpected focus of the commission’s latest meeting. [Image: National Capital Planning Commission] What happens next Work continues on the project, which was originally expected to take more than four years to complete. The sudden scrutiny could add delays to that timeline. Trump officials now serving in the National Capital Planning Commission could continue to make the renovation a target; Vought has already said that administration officials want to visit the buildings to observe the work thats underway. In the face of this pressure, Powell has called for a review by the Fed’s inspector general. This far into a multiyear, multibillion-dollar project, little is expected to change about the actual renovation work underway. The remainder of Powells term at the Fed, however, seems up in the air as Vought and others within the Trump administration seek to use the project against him.
Category:
E-Commerce
Most designers know they have to wait a few years until they crack the six-figure ceiling. But at some organizations, they might not have to wait at all. As Fast Company wrapped up its latest report on the state of the design jobs market, we wondered which companies paid the highest premium for designers who were just starting out in their careers. We looked at the 40,000 job listings wed gathered from Googles job search engine between December 2024 and February 2025 and zeroed in on the salaries that companies were offering to prospective employees with up to one year of previous experience. Heres what we found. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); Architects Somewhat surprisingly, the best place to start high in architecture is to go into local and federal government. Los Angeles offers its junior architects the most, at an average of $131,800 a year, followed by the Navy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And thats to say nothing of the pensions and health care that comes with working in public service. Graphic Designers The American tobacco market has been flagging for years, but the market for nicotine has never been higher. That has left Altria flush with cash for hiring designers to package the pouches flying off the shelves. Other top-paying companies include food conglomerate Danone, a motley assortment of agencies and, curiously, plumbers. Interior Designers The government is again a top entry-level payer for interior designers, with the Veterans Health Administration offering $103,000 to its junior designers. But, interestingly, its furniture stores that make up the bulk of this list, at least with the salaries theyre promising that designers can make on commission. Li Interiors leads the pack at $112,500 for entry-level talent, rounded out by Furniture Fair, BoConcept, and Ethan Allen. Product Designers As weve written elsewhere, product designers can expect to make the highest salaries overall, and thats just as true for entry-level ones. Ford tops the list with salaries averaging $150,000, followed by insurer Oscar, blockchain startup QuickNode, and Warner Bros. Urban Designers The University of Pittsburgh offers the highest salary for urban designers looking to start out at the top of the income bracketa planner in its planning, design, and construction department fetches $112,600. Several design firms and municipal governments are offering starting salaries that arent far behind. UX Designers Topping the list of companies offering high entry-level UX design salaries is marketing agency Lio, which manages to outdo tech giants Agilent and Oracle. Deloitte, unsurprisingly, is also a top payer. This article is part of Fast Company’s continuing coverage of where the design jobs are, including this year’s comprehensive analysis of 170,000 job listings
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E-Commerce
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