FAQ
Below we have provided answers to a few frequently asked questions about The Big Green Machine.
What is The Big Green Machine?
The Big Green Machine tracks investments in clean energy supply chains in North America (United States, Canada, and Mexico), including the wind, solar, battery, and electric vehicle industries.
Who is running this?
The website, dashboard, and database have been assembled by Jay Turner and student researchers in the Environmental Studies Department at Wellesley College.
What does The Big Green Machine track?
TBGM provides detailed information for projects in the wind, solar, battery, and electric vehicle supply chains, including project status, target jobs generated, union status, the role of foreign investments, socioeconomic indicators of the communities where projects are located, environmental justice, electricity grid demands, and more.
What isn’t The Big Green Machine tracking?
The Big Green Machine does not track deployment of clean energy technologies. For example, we track factories manufacturing solar panels, but we not track how many or where solar arrays are being deployed.
The website includes access to other trackers that may include such information.
Where are we getting information from?
TBGM is compiled from publicly available sources of information, such as press releases, regulatory filings, zoning documents, government documents, and media coverage. Specific sources for a site can be accessed by searching for specific facilities through the search page.
How often is The Big Green Machine updated?
At least monthly, we will post updated versions of TBGM on BlueSky @jayturner.bsky.social. During the Biden administration, we posted updates around the 16th day of each month, the anniversary of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Since the start of Trump 47, we have posted updates on the 20th day of each month, the anniversary of inauguration day.
Intellectual Property Rights
The publicly available dataset and the charts, graphics, and interactive dashboards based upon such data and available through this website (collectively, "The Big Green Machine Data") are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY 4.0).
Other than the rights granted in The Big Green Machine Data, we reserve all rights in the website and its contents, features, and functionality.
The Big Green Machine is a trademark of Wellesley College.
How is The Big Green Machine funded?
This project has been funded by internal grants at Wellesley College, including the Sophomore Early Research Program, Brachman Hoffman Small Grants program, the Knapp Social Science Center faculty grants program, the Science Center Summer Research Program, and the Social Science Summer Research Program.
Acknowledgements:
The charts, maps, and interactive graphics on this website have been created using Tableau. Thank you to Tableau for making their software available for non-profit academic research. Some underlying code for the website has been developed using generative artificial intelligence tools, including ChatGPT and Gemini.
Can you download data?
Yes, you can! Request access to the Google Sheet version of the dataset by visiting our website, which is linked in our bio. Once you open the website, go to Menu > Resources > Access Database, and you'll find the link to access data right at the top.