The Economic Perspective 9/5/2025

The Latest Trending Economic, Environmental and Infrastructure News Curated for You by The Balmoral Group

The Balmoral Group provides practical, professional and precise Economics, Data Analytics, and Engineering Consulting services and is part of a globally integrated team.

Happy Friday! 

Welcome Back! This week New Scientist has released an article covering advances in AI power usage. With more utilities seeking to dramatically expand capacity to accommodate data centers supporting AI and citing statistics like every AI search using 16 oz. of water more than a traditional Google search, new technology that carries out AI tasks with almost no power is welcome news. See full article and link below.

This week's articles explore contaminated soils in construction aggregates, 'orphan oil wells' forest resilience projects, among more! This week's data visualization covers NOAA's partnership to deploy uncrewed aircraft to track data on hurricane developments.

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Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

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Contaminated Soils to Construction Aggregates

A $40-million soil-wash facility conceived by Alterra Industrial Outdoor Storage and Eco Materials LLC is now operating in South Philadelphia. The urban facility, which converts contaminated soils into clean aggregates for reuse in construction projects, is designed to process up to 250 tons of material per hour and is expected to divert about 700,000 tons of soil from landfills per year. About 85% of the processed contaminated soils may be reclaimed as washed stone, masonry sand, and other aggregates that meet C-33 specifications. Read More here.

Wildfires Blaze Across California Gold Country, Ravages Historic Town

A cluster of lightning sparked wildfires have struck Northern California forcing widespread evacuations and engulfing a historic Gold Rush era mining town. This town, while having fewer than 100 residents, was a historic landmark for Gold Rush era Chinese immigrants to California. No casualties have been reported as of now, but several historic landmarks have been destroyed including the town’s post office, a hilltop cemetery and church, as well as several dozen homes. While these fires do not compare to the destruction of the January LA fires, they follow a trend of increasing risk of wildfires in California. Read More here.

When Old Oil Wells Become 'Orphans', That's a Problem

All across the U.S., there are aging oil and natural gas wells no longer in use. Many of these wells have not been sealed up, with some estimates saying up to a million of these ‘orphan’ wells still exist. They are often left unplugged and improperly sealed, allowing pollutants to seep into the environment. These chemicals will have a large impact on groundwater, and other natural resources. Even plugged wells can eventually start leaking again if not maintained. Ohio has an orphan well program to help plug many of these old wells that no longer are owned by anyone. Last fiscal year over 300 wells were plugged by this program, encouraging other states to help fix many of these wells. Ohio’s program sets a good example for other states to help fix many of these wells. Old plugs will be cleaned out and re-plugged. Plugs should last longer compared to plugs put in decades ago, but there is still risk these plugs will eventually start leaking again. Listen and read more about this story here.

Colorado is Building the 'World's Largest' Wildlife Overpass

Twice a year, thousands of elk, deer, and pronghorn migrate between their season ranges in Colorado. Winters are spent in lowlands grazing, while summer are spent in the mountains. As these journeys are made dangers arise for these animals as well as human motorists. To combat this danger Colorado is building a massive wildlife crossing bridge. For $15 million the I-25 overpass is hoping to be completed by December and will be the largest wildlife crossing in the world. This bridge will be completed in partnership between Colorado DOT, FHWA, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Douglas County and other partners. Most of the funding for this project is coming from USDOT via the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Expectations are that animal related car crashes will reduce by 90% once construction is complete. Read more here.

New Forest Health Resilience Projects to Improve Timber Production

The USDA is investing over $8 million in five new forest restoration projects to reduce wildfire risk, protect water quality, and bolster timber production nationwide. These initiatives, part of the Joint Chiefs’ Landscape Restoration Partnership Program, expand upon existing efforts adding to the $32 million already committed to 24 ongoing three-year projects. The new projects span six states: Alabama, Colorado and Wyoming, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon, with efforts ranging from longleaf pine restoration to watershed resilience. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz highlights the importance of collaborative, landscape-scale work, while NRCS Chief Aubrey J.D. Bettencourt emphasizes technical and financial support for locally led conservation. Read more here.

Securing the Future of AI

A computer science professor at Wake Forest, Sarra Alqahtani, has received a $598,609 NSF CAREER award to improve the safety of multi-agent AI systems used in healthcare, self-driving cars, and disaster response. Her five-year project will establish the first security standards and benchmarks to keep those systems reliable even if some parts fail or face attacks. Alongside her research, she will launch new courses on AI safety, expand hands-on training, and lead student projects, including a collaboration with CINCIA to train drones that identify dangerous areas in the Amazon rainforest. Read more here

Light-Based AI Image Generator Uses Almost no Power

An AI image generator using light to produce images instead of conventional computing hardware could consume hundreds of times less energy. Current image generation AI uses a process called diffusion to generate images after scanning large amounts of other images. This process is energy intensive and with the large demand of these images large amounts of water are needed to cool AI systems. Aydogan Ozcan at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues have developed a diffusion-based image generator that uses light, while the encoding process is digital. This system needs some work to be adapted into large data centers, but it already has cut energy costs for image generation down to just millionths of a fraction of previous costs. Read More here. 

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Data Visualization of the Week

NOAA and Partners Deploy Mini Ocean Robots to Collect Hurricane Data

NOAA in partnership with the University of Southern Mississippi and with the robotics company Oshen launched small uncrewed surface vehicles call C-Stars off the U.S. Virgin Islands on August 31^st to better understand hurricane development and activity. This comes as NOAA is trying to expand the use of uncrewed aircraft to collect data and study hurricane development. Other aircraft are already collecting important data points like seabed mapping, marine mammal and fishery stock assessments, emergency response, tornado damage, algal blooms, and others. The C-Stars will be collecting data on wind speed and direction, surface temperature, air temperature, air pressure, and relative humidity. These metrics are important in understanding what causes hurricane development. Below you can see locations where C-Stars have been deployed as well as local probabilities of hurricane force winds affecting the areas. Read more here.