Kansas

Panasonic’s new US$4 billion battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, is designed to be a model of sustainability – it’s an all-electric factory with no need for a smokestack. When finished, it will cover the size of 48 football fields, employ 4,000 people and produce enough advanced batteries to supply half a million electric cars per year. But there’s a catch, and it’s a big one. While the factory will run on wind and solar power much of the time, renewables supplied only 34% of the local utility Evergy’s electricity in 2023. In much of the U.S., fossil fuels still play a key role in meeting power demand. In fact, Evergy has asked permission to extend the life of an old coal-fired power plant to meet growing demand, including from the battery factory. With my students at Wellesley College, I’ve been tracking the boom in investments in clean energy manufacturing and how those projects – including battery, solar panel and wind turbine...

Hiring a dedicated staff member to advise Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly on water is a move meant to bring the often-siloed issue front and center, said Vijay Ramasamy, who started the job this fall. “My job is to make water central to a lot of our conversations,” Ramasamy said on the Kansas Reflector podcast. Ramasamy, who worked for Kelly previously on energy and environmental issues, was announced as the governor’s new special adviser on water in October. A few weeks later, Kelly announced she would create a water “subcabinet” to coordinate across the numerous state agencies with authority over water. The idea, Ramasamy said, is to have someone in the governor’s office “at a high level that’s thinking about water on a consistent basis.” “So when we have economic development conversations, we’re thinking about water,” he said. “When we’re having policy conversations or legisl...