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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe week between qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 and the actual race is usually pretty quiet from a news perspective. But there’s nothing usual about the last week in this year’s Month of May. Major penalties assessed to two cars owned by Team Penske—including the car driven by two-time defending champion Josef Newgarden—inflamed long-running concerns about Roger Penske’s ownership of both the IndyCar Series and arguably its most successful team.
In an extraordinary press conference on Monday, IndyCar President Doug Boles announced that he and another Penske executive decided that harsher penalties were warranted in an effort to protect the integrity of the Indy 500. Their decision, he said, was made without the input of their boss, Roger Penske. Two days later, Team Penske shocked the industry by announcing that it was parting ways with three of the team’s top executives. That included President Tim Cindric, long considered to be Penske’s successor in the racing part of his automobile empire.
Boles dropped another bombshell late on Wednesday of this week. He revealed that IndyCar has been exploring the creation of an independent governing body beyond Penske’s control to officiate the series without the appearance of bias.
If you live in the central Indiana media market, these rapid-fire announcements might have been bewildering. You’ve heard references to “cheating” and “scandal.” You’ve heard that the smoking gun for the qualifying penalties was something called an “attenuator” that had been illegally modified in some way. You’ve heard that all of these developments are a “big deal” for Penske, and therefore the series. If you don’t follow IndyCar religiously, this week’s IBJ Podcast gives you the relevant background and serves as a primer on which elements are important. Our guest is John Oreovicz, a motorsports journalist and author who has covered IndyCar for three decades.
Click here to find the IBJ Podcast each Monday. You can also subscribe at iTunes, Tune In, Spotify and any other place you find podcasts.
You can also listen to these recent episodes:
IBJ Podcast: Whatever happened to downtown’s elevated People Mover?
IBJ Podcast: Pete the Planner on student loan collections, recessions, stagflation (and holding our breath)
IBJ Podcast: Inside the Legislature’s wild session on tax breaks, hospitals, IEDC and more
IBJ Podcast: Indiana NIL guru says settlement threatens ‘what we love about college sports’
IBJ Podcast: UConn champion Kelley Gay applies on-court lessons as corporate VP in Indy
IBJ Podcast: Maureen Weber on the importance of early learning, leadership and failure
IBJ Podcast: Could a tax credit upgrade help make Indiana a film and media hub?
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Why does the IEDC awards to the Battery Innovation Center, who awards Andretti Petroleum..and the Battery Innovation Center the Hydrogen of Indiana (I know, it’s confusing, and it’s also called greenwashing.)
Indiana Hydrogen Ecosystem Initiative
PROJECT SUMMARY:
Over the last two years ESN has completed an extensive Indiana Hydrogen Ecosystem Report that details the economic, environmental, and innovation benefits of building out a hydrogen economy in Indiana. Hydrogen economy strategies and policies are becoming common place across the globe including in a number of US states (TX, OK, CA, etc.). Indiana has an opportunity to help shape and participate in this new energy marketplace drawing on some competitive advantages that exist in the state including a robust trucking and logistics industry and interstate highway network, large number of renewable energy developments (wind and solar) for green hydrogen production, access to an interstate ammonia pipeline, and a number of industrial use cases for hydrogen. Over the next two years ESN will lead the formation and begin the implementation of a hydrogen ecosystem pilot project that will move Indiana into a position of strategic leadership in demonstrating and validating this high growth global market opportunity.
The pilot project will focus on the following objectives:
• Recruit and secure commitment from companies that want to part of an Indiana
Hydrogen Ecosystem program with the goal of developing a commercial scale green
hydrogen production facility (goal of ~50 MW electrolyzer co-located with a solar or wind
farm)
• Recruit and secure commitment from companies to develop small green ammonia plant
on site (hydrogen to anhydrous ammonia)
Hydrogen corridor with H2 fueling station sites located along a major route in Indiana.
Indiana Economic Development Corporation
21st Century Research & Technology Fund • Partnership with H2 fuel cell truck fleet pilots leveraging the Hydrogen corridor
• Identify what long term regulatory and policy tools are needed to support further
expansion of Indiana hydrogen marketplace
• Coordinate pursuit of federal funding through DOE Hydrogen Hub program in partnership
with IEDC, industry, and academia.
• Support Purdue research and analysis around the use of green hydrogen for industrial
thermal needs, aviation fuels, and to green fertilizer to reduce CO2 footprint of ethanol.
Proposed Partners
Green Hydrogen Production Site: Cf Industries, Duke Energy, Koch Nitrogen, NuStar Pipeline, Avina,
Hoosier Solar, Cummins, Itochu, BIC, Praxair
I-69 Hydrogen Corridor: Itochu, Toyota, Cummins, Avina, Andretti Group, BIC
https://secure.in.gov/apps/iedc/transparencyportal/viewtaxgrantloancontract/63d18e9c65b6ec11983e001dd804cef0
In 2023 an employee from Andretti UK called Mark Haskins, called me at my home in Carmel to tell me that “if I wanted to have business in Indiana I needed to sponsor Andretti”.
Yup.
The British Andretti rep continued to share that “since Formula One is expensive and the State of Indiana cannot sponsor a Fomula One team, the IEDC came up with an INNOVATIVE way to pay for Andretti Formula One, by using sustainability grants via the Battery Innovation Center” and he added “BECAUSE SUSTAINABILITY GRANTS ARE UNLIMITED IN INDIANA”.
Andretti and the IEDC Battery Innovation Center had been selling our economy to turn left.