2023 Election Highlights

With a national election occurring next year, there is increased media attention on local candidates’ economic, social and foreign policy platforms. This fall, the Southeast held four key elections in Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia, which highlighted the tension between federally funded clean energy initiatives and traditional gas, oil and coal industries.

Map of the Month – December

Following last month’s map that explored home purchase mortgage denial rates by race, this month’s map shows home improvement mortgage denial rates by race in five Southeast cities: Atlanta, Birmingham, Miami, Nashville, and Richmond. Like mortgage loans for home purchases, we found wide disparities between racial groups in their ability to access lending for home improvements.

Map of the Month – October

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and other recent federal developments provide unprecedented opportunities to hasten the energy transition through the development of renewable energy resources. Yet this progress is being hindered by the backlog of energy projects waiting in the interconnection queue, a phase in which energy developers request to connect to the power grid and complete studies about the impact of these connections. The number of projects waiting in the nation’s interconnection queue grew by 40 percent in 2022 as more renewable energy projects were greenlit. The amount of time each project spends in the queue is also growing. Projects completed in 2022 spent an average of five years in the queue, compared to less than two years for projects completed in 2008.