Energy

The clean energy buildout is now colliding with the oldest power in American local government: land-use control. Wind, solar, and transmission need land. Local zoning can slow them, reshape them, or block them outright. And the scale of the conflict is rising. A major 2025 research update from Columbia’s Sabin Center documented the growth of local restrictions and disputes: by the end of 2024, at least 459 counties and municipalities across 44 states  had adopted severe local

If the 2010s zoning fights were about apartments, the 2020s fights are increasingly about infrastructure disguised as real estate. Data centers—driven by cloud computing and the AI boom—are land-intensive, power-hungry, and politically explosive when they land near neighborhoods. Zoning is now the front line. Northern Virginia is the case study because it’s one of the world’s most concentrated data center regions. As expansion accelerated, the conflict shifted from abstract

Developers obsess over rates, rents, and construction costs. But in 2026, one variable increasingly separates winners from losers : time. Permit time. Review time. Re-submittal time. Hearing time. Because time is carrying cost—and carrying cost is margin. That’s why a quiet shift matters: cities are piloting AI-assisted permitting and plan review to reduce backlogs and accelerate housing delivery. What AI can actually do ( and what it can’t ) AI is not a magic stamp that app

New South Wales is turning climate ambition into a hard infrastructure program. The state has legislated a 70% emissions reduction target by 2035 (from 2005 levels) on the way to net zero by 2050, anchoring its strategy in a network of Renewable Energy Zones (REZs) that bundle generation, storage, and transmission at regional scale.   Under the NSW Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap , five REZs are being rolled out as “clean energy industrial parks” that concentrate high-qual