Investor Watch: October 19, 2023

NORTH CAROLINA

Nearly 1,200 international employers have operations in a state where FDI-backed employment grew four times as fast as private-sector employment overall between 2015 and 2020.

RESOURCE

Connect with economic development specialists at utilities across the nation and abroad.

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Detroit-based land mapping and location intelligence firm Regrid (originally Loveland Technologies) yesterday unveiled what it says is the first-ever nationwide land parcel coverage map with data in every U.S. county. For the record, that’s 156,518,416 parcels and more than 183 million building footprints across 3.8 million square miles in 3,229 counties. In addition to a free account option and levels of subscription-based access that begin at $10 a month or $100 a year, Regrid’s Data with Purpose program provides academics and non-profits access to land insight at a pay-what-you-can-afford price, all under the slogan “from one inch to the entire nation.”

The company calls the dataset a steppingstone toward “unearthing new insights about land and property, propelling a wave of informed decisions and innovative solutions in real estate, site selection, urban planning, and beyond.” In a blog noting the occasion of reaching 100% coverage, CEO Jerry Paffendorf revisits the original idea: “There should be an accessible source for land parcel data that illuminates all kinds of things (not just real estate stuff). It should be accessible to people who typically can’t afford it or don’t know how to work with raw data. It should be presented with an attitude of community care and curiosity about how land and property might work differently and better.”

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Photo courtesy of Naked Energy and ELM Companies

“Creighton University’s Graves Hall is the first North American facility to use Virtu^{HOT HD}, a next-generation solar thermal collector from Naked Energy, implemented by ELM Solar of ELM Companies, Naked Energy’s North American distributor,” the companies announced last week. The newly opened resident hall is home to 400 first-year students at Creighton’s Omaha campus. “Solar thermal technology has enormous potential because it takes the task of heating water, a major source of energy cost in any building, off the power grid, resulting in savings for the building owner and less stress on the grid,” said ELM Founder and Chairman Lee C. Graves in a release. Energy use for heating water accounts for around 20% of household energy use, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The installation at Graves Hall is expected to generate 237,000 BTU (69.9 kW) of thermal energy, the companies said.