Investor Watch: March 24, 2025

DP World and NSW Ports converge at Port Botany. A University of Alberta spinout will build a biopharma plant in Edmonton. Steel Authority of India Limited will invest more than $3 billion in expansion in Odisha.

BIOPHARMA

Deployments by Moderna and Amgen will offer evidence. Arnold & Porter’s Global Life Sciences lead shares insights on the convergence of AI and life sciences.

MIDDLE EAST

Tens of billions of dollars in projects are headed to Saudi Arabia. Many are in the surging AI space, and one big one is in a more traditional space: HVAC.

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In 2018, Duke Energy Renewables completed the acquisition from Invenergy of the 24.9-megawatt Shoreham Solar Commons project, located on the site of the former Tallgrass Golf Course in Brookhaven, New York.
Photo courtesy of Duke Energy

A recent Reasons To Be Cheerful story on the “rewilding” of golf courses reminded us of our 2018 Site Selection Energy Report story “Power Game” that documented the repurposing of some of the world’s surplus golf courses for solar power production. A study published in February in Environmental Research Communications found that “areas equivalent to those currently used for golf could support the installation of up to 842 GW of solar and 659 GW of wind capacity in the top 10 countries with the most golf courses.” The authors took pains to point out that “this example was chosen not to suggest the conversion of actual golf courses, but to illustrate the potential for renewable energy development on similarly large and underutilized areas.”

Power from the Shoreham Solar Commons project pictured above is purchased by the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) under a 20-year contract. Meanwhile, LIPA in December signed agreements for more repurposing in the area: the development of two battery energy storage plants, one in Hauppage and one on the site of the never-opened Shoreham Nuclear Power Station.

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Photo by Yaya Ernst: Getty Images

As the U.S. Congress considers a tax package, the abundance of excellent, up-to-date analysis from the Tax Foundation includes analysis of current global corporate tax rate changes and rankings and a timely new report released this month that analyzes potential reforms to U.S. international corporate tax rules.

2013 photo courtesy of National Register of Historic Places

If you’re not from the area, you might not know this: Ford Motor Company once operated assembly plants in Seattle, Washington. The first one opened in 1914 in South Lake Union and assembled around 600 Model Ts per year from the top floor down. (Today’s it’s a self-storage facility.) Needing more capacity a century ago, Ford chose to relocate its Seattle operation to this new plant designed by industrial architect Albert Kahn. It opened in 1932 and was only in operation for one year before the Great Depression forced its closure.

“The factory exemplifies Kahn’s approach to Ford’s concept of ‘enlightened capitalism’ in which the architecture affects factory conditions, the quality of products, and the worker through such factors as ergonomics, cleanliness, and the role of light and ventilation,” says the National Register of Historic Places. “The Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant is an excellent example of a regional automotive manufacturing and distribution center from the early 1930s, and demonstrates Ford’s genius in integrating a pivotal location, abundant natural resources, a ready human workforce, an increasingly mature national and international distribution system, and cutting-edge industrial architecture to produce an efficient regional production center.”