Investor Watch: February 01, 2024

MIDWEST

Business builders share tips from heartland harbors of tech growth.

WESTERN CANADA

Tribes and provinces work to realize megaprojects against a backdrop of reconciliation.

ADVERTISEMENT

Image courtesy of University of Georgia Press

“I am large, I contain multitudes,” wrote Walt Whitman in “Song of Myself.” The same could be said of many individuals we encounter in the business and economic development world every day. Take Rodger Brown. Many — including those who read his comments in this Investment Profile we published last year in Workforce 2023 — know him as the executive director of Georgia Quick Start, the showcase workforce training program within the Technical College System of Georgia. But some — including Site Selection Senior Editor Gary Daughters, who matriculated with Brown at the University of Georgia back in the day — know him as the author of what Daughters calls the seminal book about the Athens music scene, “Party out of Bounds: The B-52’s, R.E.M., and the Kids Who Rocked Athens, Georgia.”

The 1991 book was reissued in 2016 by University of Georgia Press, which said Brown “takes the reader on a heady, keg-beer-fueled romp from the South’s dirty back roads and all-night porch parties to the precipice of rock superstardom.” Brown, who served as editorial director of Playboy.com and Britannica.com and contributed to publications such as The New York Times and the Village Voice, also is the author of “Ghost Dancing on the Cracker Circuit: The Culture of Festivals in the American South.”

The musical and industrial heritages of Athens will overlap in a book about the Murmur Trestle by renowned photographer Jason Thrasher coming later this year from University of Georgia Press. IYKYK.

NSF Engine Locations Announced

The National Science Foundation this week revealed the locations for 10 NSF Engine Awards and 44 NSF Engine Development Awards chosen from among more than 700 concepts submitted from every state. Analysis shows a cluster effect among the winning coalitions.

Solar panels capture energy in Chongqing, China.

Photo by WangAnQi: Getty Images

Research provider BloombergNEF (BNEF) on Tuesday released “Energy Transition Investment Trends 2024,” which found that “global investment in the low-carbon energy transition surged 17% in 2023, reaching $1.77 trillion.” China accounted for 38% of the total with $676 billion. But with a combined $718 billion, the EU, UK and United States (with $303 billion) invested more than China in 2023, thanks in part to the Inflation Reduction Act.

“Last year brought new records for global renewable energy investment,” said BNEF Head of Clean Power Meredith Annex, co-author of the report. “Strong growth in the U.S. and Europe drove the global rise, even as China, the world’s largest renewables market, sputtered, recording an 11% drop. Despite a year of tough headlines, a record amount of offshore wind capacity also reached financial close.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Photo courtesy of Kallman Foundation

On the 52nd anniversary of Apollo 15 “Endeavour” Pilot Al Worden’s trip to Warsaw following the crew’s successful mission, the Polish Space Agency (POLSA), Polish trade event organizer Targi Kielce and Kallman Worldwide in January announced that the Astronaut Al Worden Endeavour Scholarship Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, has selected its first team of Polish students to receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, in July 2024. The announcement took place at the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw. This photo shows Al Worden and his Apollo 15 mission crew visiting Nicolas Copernicus’ home in Toruń, Poland, in 1972.

“The program honors its namesake Al Worden, command module pilot of the Apollo 15 spacecraft ‘Endeavour,’ whose lifelong commitment to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education included serving as Kallman’s STEM ambassador at trade shows around the world from 2015 until his death in 2020,” the organizations said in a release.

More than 900,000 trainees — including children and teachers from more than 150 international locations — have graduated from a Space Camp® program since its inception in Huntsville in 1982, including European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and NASA astronauts Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, Dr. Kate Rubins, Dr. Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Christina Koch.