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Environment & SustainabilityJune 14, 202614 min

The Numbers Behind the Sun: Inside the DOE's Solar Photovoltaic Cost Benchmark System

A quiet team of researchers at the Department of Energy and its national laboratories has spent years building the most detailed map of what solar actually costs and what those numbers mean for the future of clean energy.

On a Tuesday morning in early 2025, a team of analysts at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, finished compiling a dataset that would eventually help shape how the United States thinks about solar energy costs. The work had taken months: gathering data from manufacturers, installers, and utilities; cross-referencing it against supply chain reports; running the numbers through a framework called the PV System Cost Benchmark, or PVSCB. The result was a set of quarterly cost estimates for...

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Finance & MarketsJune 14, 202611 min

Inside $10,000 Per Month: What Rising Long-Term Care Costs Mean for Families Planning Ahead

A closer look at the 2026 cost landscape reveals why a single year of care can rival a decade of mortgage payments and what families can do with that knowledge.

On a Tuesday morning in early 2026, Tammy La Barbera sat across from her mother's neurologist in a quiet exam room. Ada, now 93, had been living with dementia for nearly a decade. The diagnosis had come slowly, the costs had come faster. Tammy had already quit her job as an event manager to provide full-time care. She had converted her living room into a care station. She had learned to manage medications, coordinate physical therapy visits, and navigate the paperwork that never seemed to end. What she had not...

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