Tag: Infrastructure

The New Stadium Scam Is a Server Farm

Posted on by Lone Candle

“La Porte, Indiana, is a small city between South Bend, Indiana, and Chicago, Illinois. The recent announcement that Microsoft is investing over a billion dollars into a vast new data center campus in La Porte is expected to be transformational for the town of 22,000 people.

Microsoft was given a 40-year tax abatement on equipment, a renewable state sales tax exemption through 2068, and just $2.5 million of payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT) over four years—roughly 30 percent of what it would normally owe. After that? Nothing. Local utilities would cover the infrastructure.”

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“there’s infrastructure. Data centers demand massive utility upgrades: power lines, substations, water lines, fiber, and roads. These are usually paid for by local utilities, state infrastructure grants, or ratepayers. In Kansas City, Evergy announced it would build two new power plants largely to meet data center demand—costs to be passed on to customers. In Northern Virginia, Dominion Energy’s data center grid upgrades are now a line item in statewide electric rate hikes.”

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“these deals are struck behind closed doors, insulated from scrutiny, and built on the assumption that any growth is good—even if it’s paid for by reaching into your neighbor’s wallet.”

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“Analysts project that data center capacity will more than triple by 2030 and estimate the U.S. will need to reach 35 gigawatts of capacity by then—double today’s total. The surge is largely driven by artificial intelligence (AI), which alone could account for 70 percent of all data center demand by 2030. These facilities already draw more electricity than some nations, and Goldman Sachs projects they’ll consume up to 9 percent of U.S. power by decade’s end. New builds are booming—yet much of that construction is being underwritten, piece by piece, by state and local governments chasing the illusion of growth.

Data centers are not a menace. Left to the market, they’re a genuine asset—critical infrastructure in a country trying to stay competitive in the age of AI. We don’t need to bribe the richest companies on earth to build them.”

https://reason.com/2025/05/06/the-new-stadium-scam-is-a-server-farm/

Is the US finally on track to build a high-speed rail network?

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The US is a country of 340 million people, 71 interstate highways, more than 5,000 public airports, and currently no high-speed railways.

Yet with two high-speed rail (HSR) projects now under construction, and others planned, is the US finally on track to start catching up with the fast trains seen in China, Japan and Europe?”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-finally-track-build-high-230334491.html

Texas Lawmakers Want To Use ‘Police Power’ of the State To Halt Renewable Energy Projects

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Texas generates the most renewable energy in the nation. Three Republican bills being advanced by the state legislature could halt Texas’ green energy progress and give fossil fuels a leg up in the state’s energy market.

Senate Bill 388, which has passed the state Senate, would require at least 50 percent of power generation installed after January 1, 2026, to come from “dispatchable” energy sources, which include natural gas, nuclear power, and coal. This bill effectively subsidizes fossil fuel projects by requiring utility providers to purchase power generation credits from dispatchable energy sources.”

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“A report from Aurora Energy Research estimates that this bill would add $5.2 billion to Texas power prices over the next decade; residents could pay an extra $200 per year in energy costs.”

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“Using the “police power” of the state ignores what regulators and the market are saying: Texas needs every energy source to meet future demand. That includes renewables.”

https://reason.com/2025/05/02/texas-lawmakers-want-to-use-police-power-of-the-state-to-halt-renewable-energy-projects/

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson: Politics, Trump, AOC, Elon & DOGE | Lex Fridman Podcast #462

Posted on by Lone Candle

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson: Politics, Trump, AOC, Elon & DOGE | Lex Fridman Podcast #462

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTPSeeKokdo

Report: California Continues To Spend a Lot of Money on Poor Quality Roads

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The 2025 report ranks state highway systems across a range of metrics, including capital and maintenance spending, rural and urban pavement quality, traffic congestion, bridge quality, and safety.
Similar to reports in recent years, North Carolina and Virginia continue to be top performers, respectively ranking first and fourth on this year’s report. (Virginia was ranked first on last year’s report.)

Both states scored high on pavement quality and relatively low highway spending. Feigenbaum chalks this up to these states using quantitative metrics to select highway projects and having dedicated maintenance units within their departments of transportation.

States like California that rely less on more politicized processes to select projects tend to rank much lower on the report. Despite being one of the highest spending states, it has some of the worst pavement quality, worst traffic congestion, and an uninspiring safety record.

“You can spend above average if everything else in your system is good and still get an excellent ranking,” says Feigenbaum, pointing to Utah (which scored eighth on the report) as an example. The state’s spending is on the high side, but it also ranks highly on pavement quality, safety, and congestion.

States like California and New Jersey both spend a lot of money for no apparent improvement in performance.”

https://reason.com/2025/03/13/report-california-continues-to-spend-a-lot-of-money-on-poor-quality-roads/

Biden’s Infrastructure Bills Leave a Legacy of Big Spending and Little Payoff

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act apportioned more than $1 trillion to a wide variety of projects deemed “infrastructure,” including $550 billion toward “‘new’ investments and programs.” Among its line items, the law included $7.5 billion to build electric vehicle (E.V.) chargers across the country.

The rollout was uninspiring. Under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which controls $5 billion of the $7.5 billion total, only 183 chargers have come online at 44 stations across the country, more than three years after Biden signed the bill into law. (Under federal rules, each station funded by the law is required to have at least four charging ports.)

In fairness, not all of the cash has been spent: The NEVI has only allocated $2.4 billion and awarded $520 million, as of press time.

Still, it’s a dispiriting result from an administration that came into office with big promises to “build a national network of 500,000 charging stations.”

Similarly, the 2021 infrastructure law included the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, with $42 billion to expand broadband internet access across the country. In his speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Biden equated it with the New Deal, calling the broadband expansion “not unlike what Roosevelt did with electricity.”

But three years after its creation, the program has disbursed no money and supplied broadband to zero households. “Thanks to a federal affordability requirement that telecommunications companies say is too tight, many states have sparred with Washington over their funding applications, delaying the rollout,” Politico wrote in September.”

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“Biden’s supporters would counter that while the initial rollout was underwhelming, much of this spending is designed to pay off over time: NEVI, for example, is apportioned $1 billion per year through FY 2026 when the program’s funding runs out.”

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“it’s clear by this point that Biden’s big-spending dreams were hamstrung by bureaucracy and red tape, much of which was included in the bills themselves or in administration guidelines.”

https://reason.com/2025/01/08/bidens-infrastructure-bills-leave-a-legacy-of-big-spending-and-little-payoff/