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oced-logo-300x149On October 3, 2024, the Department of Energy Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations announced a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to fund up to $400 million for clean energy projects in rural and remote areas via its Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas program. The NOFO will provide awards ranging from $2 million – $50 million, with plans to fund 20 to 50 projects. Awards will require a non-federal cost share, range across four topic areas, and target projects in rural and remote communities with populations of 10,000 people or fewer.

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It is instructive to review the Supreme Court’s record in its most recent term, concentrating on regulatory and administrative law cases, which are usually back-burner issues. But not this term.

The Supreme Court began the current term on October 7, 2024. The Court has already chosen many cases to review in the new term, and it promises to be as interesting as the 2023 term, which produced several significant rulings affecting regulatory and administrative law, chiefly the Loper Bright Enterprises ruling. Loper Bright overturned the Court’s landmark administrative law ruling of Chevron, USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984).

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Card-300x176In the latest episode of the Resilience podcast, colleague and host Shellka Arora-Cox sits down with Kevin Yaich, head of M&A at Qcells USA, for a discussion of the current solar M&A landscape.

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GettyImages-2145412338-300x200We all need water to survive—but access to the liquid lifeline isn’t always a given. With a shifting climate and ever-increasing agricultural and industrial demands on this limited commodity, UNICEF predicts that by 2025, half of the world’s population could be living in areas facing water scarcity. On top of the obvious resource drains, many countries are losing surprising amounts of potable water to leaks. For example, in the United States alone, an estimated 6 billion gallons of treated drinking water seep out of its supply every day due to aging pipelines and undetected leaks.

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In our latest roundup, construction output decreased, office utilization unchanged, September apartment starts fell 15% from a year ago as developers pulled permits, and more!

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In our latest roundup, Hurricane Helene affects infrastructure, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bills aimed at renter protections, Federal Reserve kick-off rate-easing cycle, and more!

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Blog-pic-300x191Colleague and host Shellka Arora-Cox recently sat down with Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of EDP Renewables North America, to discuss the fascinating intersection of the energy transition and artificial intelligence.

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In our latest roundup, commercial mortgage bond market in trouble, commercial real estate investments, pressure on mortgage REITs, and more!

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GettyImages-1451308764-300x200Traditional and social media are thick with reports and predictions of the remarkable increase in size, power consumption and significance of data centers. Not only technology companies but real estate and energy developers, investment funds, lenders, and professionals of all stripes are in or determined to enter this sector. Our inboxes are full—it’s data center this, data center that.

But what exactly is a data center? What infrastructure, technology and human resources come together to create and sustain one of these localized points of computation? By understanding their components, we can glean some understanding of the business, public policy and (our focus) legal issues that arise before and during their operation.

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GettyImages-2012127464-300x200The threat of extreme wildfires has doubled in the past 20 years, with almost 20,000 fires blazing across the United States in 2024 alone. These high-intensity fires can be deadly, expensive, and create lingering health and environmental consequences. While we are used to seeing firefighters on the frontlines, researchers hope that next-generation smart technology, augmented by artificial intelligence (AI), will also play a key role in battling these conflagrations. Many municipalities, particularly those near wildfire-prone forests, are beginning to incorporate fire-focused advances (or “firetech”) into their smart city ecosystems.

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