ED Now

The most recent episode of IEDC’s Economic Development Sessions series featured IEDC president and CEO Nathan Ohle in conversation with U.S. Secretary of Energy and former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. Granholm reflected on her experience facilitating economic development in her past and present roles. Granholm first discussed critical economic diversification strategies she used while serving as Governor of Michigan during the 2008 financial crisis: “We had been the auto manufacturing state for so long, but we knew we had to add new legs to our economic table to balance it.” Through federal partnerships Granholm diversified Michigan’s auto industry, including by investing in electric vehicle battery ...

Aaron Brickman and Lachlan Carey from the Rocky Mountain Institute recently joined an IEDC panel to discuss the historic initiatives within the Inflation Reduction Act. They emphasized the enormous opportunity for economic developers within the $369-billion act. “It’s hard to underestimate just how big of an opportunity this is nationally, regionally, and specifically for economic developers,” Carey said. “The next nine to 15 months will determine the next 15 to 30 years of capital allocation.” The Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law on August 16 by President Biden, and marks the single largest investment in clean energy in U.S. history. It comes at a time when the clean energy industry is rapidly ...

The California Supreme Court ruled in March that the University of California, Berkeley must cut its undergraduate enrollment by nearly 3,000 for the 2022–23 school year. The ruling came only three weeks before the university had planned to mail acceptance letters, forcing it to send 5,000 fewer offers. The university had been sued by Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, a local anti-density group, under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods successfully argued that the university had insufficiently assessed the environmental impact of increasing its enrollment. However, the group’s leader publicly stated that he sued because higher enrollment would increase the city’s ...