Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at SpaceX’s turbine blade factory, Fervo’s deal with Google, Delhi’s cheap metro, why recycling is overrated, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
Housing and Cities
Claims that increased immigration raids on residential construction jobsites are straining US homebuilders. “In some markets, homebuilders say the impact has been significant; in others, it has been an existential threat to their ability to continue operating as businesses, complete homes, and repay construction loans.” [HousingWire]
YIMBY in Practice on the different strategies states can use to pre-empt local control over housing construction in the hopes of getting more housing built, and how likely they are to succeed. “The hierarchy is clear. Whatever policy gives the state the most power over housing tends to be the best. Whatever policy gives the local governments the most power tends to be the worst. The trouble is that what’s good policy is not always good politics. State preemption bills are often the most difficult for pro-housing legislators to pass. And in the heat of negotiations, they often end up somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Preserving local discretion may not be a good idea, but it’s often what is needed to get a bill to pass.” [YIMBY Action]
The Free Press on four decades of attempts to build a gravel road between a remote Alaskan town and an runway 18 miles away, and the environmental activists who keep opposing it. [The FP]
Surprised I hadn’t heard of these before: “Costco doors” are doors that homebuilders put between the garage and the pantry to make unloading groceries easier. [X]
Manufacturing
Not satisfied with the 100% tariffs, an alliance of several major automakers, including GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai, want congress to ban import of Chinese cars completely. [Reuters] And China is exporting so many cars that it’s straining global supplies of car carrier ships. [Freightwaves]
SpaceX is apparently building a turbine blade factory to help get gas turbine power plants for AI data centers online more quickly. Turbine blades are famously complex, but rockets have a lot of turbomachinery — turbo pumps are used to pump fuel into the motor — so this isn’t a completely wild jump. “According to the outlet’s account of the Morgan Stanley report, the foundry would supply single-crystal nickel superalloy parts to both the turbopumps powering SpaceX’s Raptor engines and to natural gas power turbines.” [QZ]
Energy
The US continues to install a lot of battery storage: between April and June of this year, US grid energy storage capacity increased by about 10%. [Canary Media]
Also on the subject of batteries, consumers are starting to use home battery storage for energy arbitrage: buying power off the grid when it’s cheap, and selling it back when it’s expensive. [Bloomberg]
Enhanced geothermal startup Fervo signs a deal to supply 396 megawatts of power to Google for a potential Utah datacenter. [Fervo] (I haven’t been tracking Fervo since the IPO, and was surprised to see its stock down about 50% since it went public.) [Yahoo]
While US shale oil output was growing steadily for many years, for most major US shale basins production has now flattened out. [X]
Nuclear reactor startup Oklo had a hybrid power project (combining nuclear, fuel cells, ans gas generation) dropped from a PJM interconnection planning process; PJM claims that that the “company never showed the project could ride through a sudden drop in grid voltage.” Oklo has filed a complaint with FERC to get the project reinstated. [Utility Dive]