The archive
Environment
Recycling can be complicated. The process can be even more daunting for industrial facilities sorting scrap metals like aluminum and other hard-to-recycle mixed parts. Now, a startup from Fort Wayne, Indiana, has found a way to relieve the burden on manufacturers by leveraging AI.
Economics
At home, lower energy prices—particularly at the pump—are central to Trump’s strategy for reducing consumer inflation and stimulating economic growth. The President has set an ambitious goal of reducing retail gasoline prices to below $2 per gallon, a significant drop from the current national average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Culture
Though progress has been made, multiple fires continue to burn throughout Los Angeles, with at least 5,000 structures destroyed or damaged and an estimated $57 billion worth of losses. Families have lost their homes, and mom-and-pop businesses have been destroyed. This wasn’t supposed to happen to urban areas.
Culture
Among the raft of executive actions in the first days of his second term, President Trump issued several related to energy and the climate. This included the declaration of a “National Energy Emergency.”
Energy
American hydropower is facing some challenges. Experts say we are past ‘peak dam,’ and the number of new dams being built every year has dwindled. Despite providing reliable, clean electricity, environmental opposition to new and existing dams persists.
Tech
While more approvals are necessary to begin operations, recommissioning nuclear power plants will play a vital role in meeting America’s growing energy demand and increasing nuclear energy capacity in the U.S.
Culture
Community-driven clean energy projects often address local problems more effectively than big corporations or governments can. In Taos, New Mexico, Kit Carson Electric Cooperative improved an unreliable power supply by installing microgrid-small-scale, self-sufficient power grids that generate electricity for a localized area.
Energy
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) awarded Constellation Energy more than $1 billion in combined government contracts to provide nuclear power to 80 federal facilities representing more than 13 federal agencies.
Policy
The high cost of energy is perhaps the biggest challenge UK business faces in being globally competitive. In a world where Donald Trump’s energy policies are likely to lead to even more of a differential in costs between the UK and US, it is almost impossible to see how UK companies generally can be competitive.
Transportation
While the freight industry has opposed the Biden administration’s costly, unworkable regulations to reduce emissions from heavy-duty trucks, innovators are finding ways to clean up the nation’s existing fleet cost-effectively.
