The White House has released the text of the President’s new Executive Order strengthening the Federal Government’s commitment to taking new actions to enhance and promote environmental justice. The Order was published in the Federal Register on April 26, 2023 at 88 FR 25251. President Clinton’s pioneering 1994 Executive Order…
In today’s roundup, Americans can buy homes with bitcoin, new tech aims to engineer a novel building material, federal investments boost the coastline (and construction sales), and more. A bitcoin real estate marketplace, claiming it can close deals within one business day, made its U.S. debut. (Carla Mozée, Markets Insider)…
In today’s roundup, construction waxes and wanes, energy goals are set, and concerns abound for the commercial real estate market in the United States and Europe. A new AI-driven real estate platform, Land on Earth, will use their ChatGPT-powered HomeMatch technology to match house hunters with their ideal properties. (Business…
Design professionals, real estate developers and builders alike are advocating for a relatively new way of using one of the world’s oldest building materials—wood—in large-scale commercial and residential construction projects. Mass timber, or structural timber, touts such benefits as carbon reduction and seismic durability—all with a lower construction time. With…
Making good on a promise to redefine the Clean Water Act (CWA) term, “Waters of the United States” or WOTUS, on January 18, 2023, the latest revised definition of “Waters of the United States” was published in the Federal Register by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) and the Environmental…
On March 8, 2023, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced approximately $6 billion in funding to accelerate decarbonization projects in energy intensive industries and provide American manufacturers a competitive advantage. Funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Industrial Demonstrations Program will focus on revolutionizing…
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems captured considerable attention with the release of a large language chatbot, ChatGPT, by OpenAI, in November of last year. On March 14, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, a more powerful “multimodal” chatbot responding to both text and images. And, on March 21, Google launched its conversational computer program,…
Recently, two Federal policies have been released that could have a significant effect upon environmental remediation and the emergency response procedures and policies of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The recent train derailment in Palestine, Ohio, may bring them into sharper focus. The regulated community may find it useful to…
Empty office buildings downtown. A housing shortage in almost every major market. Is there a way to address both issues at once by converting historic but underutilized office buildings into apartments and condos in city centers? It’s an idea that has been discussed, and in some cities, implemented in recent…
On February 28, 2023, the first funding opportunity opened under the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science Act (CHIPS Act), federal legislation that appropriated $52.7B in federal funding to boost the semiconductor industry, including $39B in semiconductor manufacturing incentives. Projects involving construction, expansion or modernization of commercial facilities…