The Trump administration’s stop-work order on Ørsted’s Revolution Wind project has already become a defining event for investors and developers in the United States energy sector. The project was nearly complete, with billions already invested in turbines, monopiles, offshore cables, port infrastructure, and labor. Every required federal and state permit … [continued]
Canada has put a stake in the ground by deciding which megaprojects are now officially in the national interest. Out of an initial list of 32 candidates I analysed recently, five made the cut. That is a small number on paper, but the financial and climate commitments stretch out for … [continued]
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with a global expert on minerals processing and battery minerals, Lyle Trytten. We were closing out an engagement to do a technoeconomic assessment of seabed mining and it was a great opportunity to discuss the space and some of the things we … [continued]
The publication of Kim and Macfarlane’s 2026 study on small modular reactors is a moment worth pausing over. Nuclear energy sits at the margins of most serious decarbonization pathways today, but SMRs have been marketed as the technology that could change that. They are advertised as cheaper, safer, faster to … [continued]
I recently read Why Nations Fail, the 2012 book by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, who won the Nobel Prize in 2024 for Economics for their work on how institutions shape economic prosperity, and was struck by how confidently it placed the United States on a path of enduring greatness. … [continued]
The United States North American Council for Freight Efficiency’s (NACFE) Run on Less is underway again, and the lineup is broad. Battery electrics are sharing the road with renewable diesel tractors, natural gas trucks, and a pair of hydrogen fuel cell units. That variety is interesting because it reflects the … [continued]
Mass timber is being promoted as a way to cut carbon in construction, speed up schedules, and reduce costs. But there is another lens through which to view it that comes from project management research. Professor Bent Flyvbjerg has spent decades studying why large projects fail and what can be … [continued]
Mass timber has moved far beyond the novelty stage. Cross laminated timber and glulam started to gain attention a decade ago as materials that could replace concrete and steel in mid-rise buildings. Since then the technology has advanced, codes have adapted, and architects and engineers have pushed the limits of … [continued]
In 2019, South Korea announced a program that was meant to make the country a global leader in hydrogen transportation. The government declared that all 802 police buses then in service would be replaced with hydrogen fuel cell models by 2028. These were not ordinary buses. They were national security … [continued]
The publication of A prudent planetary limit for geologic carbon storage in Nature is an important moment in the conversation about carbon capture and storage. For decades storage has been discussed as if it were an almost limitless global sink, with estimates running from 10,000 to 40,000 gigatons of CO₂ … [continued]
