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Feb 4, 2026, 10:04:39 AM (4 days ago) Feb 4

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Winter sports fans, rejoice. The Olympics are set to get underway this week. The Games are back in Cortina, Italy, following a 70 year gap. What’s changed? The climate, of course.

Today’s newsletter looks at not just how much Cortina has warmed, but how future Olympics will be forced to grapple with rising temperatures.

Meanwhile Tesla’s former energy chief has secured more than $230 million to expand his battery startup into new markets, including Texas and Puerto Rico. And the African continent saw a surge in utility-scale solar projects that grew its capacity six-fold last year.

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A climate gamechanger

By Laura Millan and Hayley Warren

The snow that blanketed the Italian Alps throughout January came as a huge relief to the organizers of this month’s Winter Olympic Games. Unusually warm weather around the holidays had them worried the slopes wouldn’t be ready in time.

Alpine areas are heating up faster than the rest of the planet, with shorter winters that tend to bring less snowfall and more rain, plus bouts of extreme cold and poor visibility. The vast range of possible conditions and their increasing unpredictability makes planning for the quadrennial winter sporting event harder than ever before.

Host cities, backed by local and national governments, are making multimillion-dollar investments in sophisticated snowmaking systems to create and maintain optimal surfaces in hopes of avoiding even costlier cancellations or relocations of races. Even so, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) may eventually need to rotate the century-old Games between a small group of the most “climate-reliable” countries to help minimize complications.

“Climate change is already reshaping winter sports as we know it,” says IOC sustainability head Julie Duffus. “The question is how we can evolve the Olympic Winter Games responsibly.”

Italy has hosted the Winer Olympic Games twice, including in Cortina — where this year’s iteration will be held — in 1956

In the 70 years since Cortina first held the Winter Games, February temperatures in the Northern Italian town have warmed 3.6C.

Cortina 1956 was the last time all the events, including figure skating, took place outside.

In fact, all the cities that staged the Winter Games since 1950 have heated up in the years since by an average of 2.7C (4.9F), according to scientists at Climate Central. That’s well above 1.4C, the warming average for the entire planet. And temperatures are set to keep rising. If greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current pace, 13% of global ski areas will have lost natural snow cover entirely by 2071 to 2100, according to a study by researchers at the University of Bayreuth in Germany published in 2024.

In practical terms, that means many of the lower-altitude resorts that typically sit at 1,000 meters to 1,300 meters (3,281 feet to 4,265 feet) above sea level are shutting down or looking to focus on hiking, mountain biking and other three-season activities instead.

Of the 93 locations that have the infrastructure to host the Winter Olympics, at least 44% will have unreliable snow conditions by around 2050, according to research by University of Waterloo professor Daniel Scott and University of Innsbruck associate professor Robert Steiger. The fewer skiing trails and snow resorts that exist around the world, the more expensive and inaccessible these sports will become, winnowing the potential pool of future Olympians further.

Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre ahead of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics

To safeguard the upcoming event, the 2026 Milano Cortina Foundation has upgraded artificial snowmaking infrastructure in some venues with technology that uses less water and energy, says its head of sport competitions, Alberto Ghezze.

But even the most advanced technology can’t create snow when the weather is too warm. Due to the change in temperatures, race cancellations and reschedulings have become more common in recent years, especially for competitions at the beginning and end of the season, disrupting plans for athletes who need to win points to qualify for the Olympics.

After the 2022 Beijing Games, which featured ribbons of manmade snow on brown hillsides and pushed sustainability to the forefront of the conversation, the IOC decided that from 2030 onwards, countries would be contractually obligated to minimize the event’s direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, protect biodiversity and manage resources sustainably. It is also considering rotating hosts among only those able to demonstrate average minimum temperatures below 0C at the time of the Winter Games over a 10-year period—just seven or eight countries would be suitable, including France, Switzerland, the US, Japan and some in the Nordics.

Read the full story, including how Olympians think about snow. Subscribe to the Business of Sports newsletter for a weekly look at the collision of power, money and sports.

The price of the Games

$3 billion

The estimated amount spent to put on this year’s Milan Cortina Games, according to Alexander Budzier, a fellow at the University of Oxford. Hosting the Games in just a handful of places would help cut down on expenses.

Summer spillover

“Without the cold, without the snow and ice, the risk just rises exponentially.”

Danny Menšík

Mountain guide

Menšík has helped climbers summit Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps. But rising temperatures have created increasingly dangerous conditions during the summer months, from unstable ice to rockfalls.

Batteries’ $230 million boost

By Coco Liu

Tesla Inc.’s former energy chief has secured more than $230 million to expand his battery startup into new markets. It’s the latest sign that the multibillion-dollar US home energy storage market is heating up as strain on the grid increases.

California-based Lunar Energy develops software that helps optimize home batteries to charge when electricity is cheap and send stored energy back to the grid when demand is high. It also began deploying its own batteries by working with distributors last year. The firm has about 2,000 installations across California, said Kunal Girotra, who left Tesla to found Lunar about six years ago.

Tesla’s former head of energy is officially launching Lunar Energy, a new startup aimed at simplifying the transition to full home electrification. Courtesy of Lunar Energy — Lunar Energy is aiming to simplify the transition to full home electrification.

The new funding includes a $102 million Series D round led by B Capital and Prelude Ventures, as well as a previously unannounced $130 million Series C round. Lunar will use it to expand battery sales in new markets, such as Texas, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. Girotra said his startup is close to being valued at $1 billion, though he declined to provide specific details.

The home battery market is attracting more interest from established companies and startups. Tesla has installed more than 1 million systems worldwide while Texas-based startup Base Power raised $1 billion last year, indicating Lunar will face stiff competition.

Despite the growing interest, there are hurdles to wider adoption. The Trump administration restricts tax credits for projects using battery materials sourced from China, and finding an alternative supply chain is a daunting task, Girotra said. Investors remain optimistic about the sector, though.

“Storage is going to be a really important part of the future,” said Mary Powell, chief executive officer of Sunrun Inc., the country’s largest residential solar installer and one of Lunar’s investors. “Skyrocketing utility rates in many parts of the country and decreasing reliability” are in part driving homeowners to buy “storage for peace of mind,” she added.

Read the full story.

This week’s Zero listen

What is the best way to tell a climate story? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Booker Prize-winning novelist George Saunders. His new novel Vigil is an exploration of guilt, told on the deathbed of an oil executive haunted by ghosts. Rathi asks Saunders what he learned about climate change, his thoughts on whether AI complements or compromises human creativity, and why literature still matters in the era of TikTok.

Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

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