IAMC News Briefs—Week of June 20, 2022
By John Salustri
WASHINGTON POST—President Biden is pushing Congress to back-burner the federal gas tax, which comes to 24.3 cents per gallon of diesel and 18.3 cents per gallon of gas. The move is a bid to further stem the rise of inflation. He is simultaneously urging states to suspend their own gas taxes. The move isn’t a slam dunk, however, and it faces some serious congressional resistance, from democrats on the hill as well as republicans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/22/biden-gas-tax-holiday/
GLOBEST.COM—Iconic kids’ toymaker Lego Group is planning its first US manufacturing plant and is investing more than $1 billion to make it happen. The plan for the 340-acre site, to be situated in Chesterfield County, VA, is currently set for a 2025 opening, but a temporary home is planned for early 2024. To date, the US market has been supplied with the colorful plastic building blocks from the Denmark firm’s Monterrey, Mexico plant, which is also set for an expansion. With the promise of creating “at least” 1760 jobs, the firm’s CEO, Niels Christiansen stated in a release that the lure of Virginia included its skilled workforce, “support for high-quality manufacturers and great transportation links.”
https://www.globest.com/2022/06/21/lego-puts-its-first-us-manufacturing-plant-in-virginia/
SUPPY CHAIN DIVE—The Securities and Exchange Commission will not insist that all publicly traded companies disclose their carbon emissions unless they have already committed to a carbon-reduction program. “If a company decides, ‘I have made no commitment to the future on that and it’s not material to my investors and my operations under the Supreme Court test of materiality,’ you don’t have a disclosure obligation on scope 3,” said SEC chief Gary Gensler. Scope 3 emissions are the result of activities from assets connected to but not owned or controlled by the reporting organization, such as those from vendors.
https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/gensler-sees-limit-sec-rule-carbon-emissions-disclosure/625772/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202022-06-21%20Supply%20Chain%20Dive%20%5Bissue:42559%5D&utm_term=Supply%20Chain%20Dive
URBAN LAND INSTITUTE—Solar provider Wunder and ClearGen, a Blackstone Credit portfolio operation, have entered into a $650-million deal to finance solar installations in commercial and industrial assets. Dubbed one of the biggest solar energy investments ever in commercial real estate, the deal addresses an underserved market estimated by the US Energy Information Administration at some six million buildings. “That market is defined as not residential and not utility scale, which means, basically, the whole of the commercial industrial real estate market is in scope,” Wunder CEO Dave Riess explains.
https://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/wunders-650-million-deal-could-boost-use-of-solar-in-commercial-and-industrial-buildings/?utm_source=realmagnet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HQ%20Urban%20Land%2006%2E17%2E2022
COMMERCIAL PROPERTY EXECUTIVE—Rexford Industrial has ponied up $218 million for six single- and multi-tenant industrial assets in the Southern California region. The acquisitions, which pace out to 535,682 square feet, come in addition to the REIT’s year-to-date area investments, which total $993 million. Coastal industrial buys dominate the sector, according to CommercialEdge. “Year-to-date through April, industrial transactions in Los Angeles exceeded $1.3 billion,” it reports. “The average price per square foot in the market grew 51.9 percent year-over-year, to $278.”
https://www.commercialsearch.com/news/rexford-reit-218m-industrial/
TRANSPORT DIVE—TRAC Intermodal reports that it takes three times as long for truckers to return chassis as it did prior to COVID-19. Despite increasing its chassis fleet two percent over last year, the company still reports “persistently low supply.” Prime among the return delays—and their obvious impact on the supply chain—are the delays in loading and unloading at warehouses and outside port terminals. “It’s a phenomenon that we are seeing across all markets,” James Segata, VP of strategy for TRAC, in an interview with Transport Dive. “Some are obviously a little worse than others.”
https://www.transportdive.com/news/trac-intermodal-adds-chassis-oakland-supply-constraints/625722/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202022-06-21%20Transport%20Dive%20%5Bissue:42568%5D&utm_term=Transport%20Dive