Hormuz hits IE freight through cost, not cargo — San Pedro ports near records in May
Far East–West Coast spot rates have more than doubled since the Hormuz blockade began, yet Long Beach and Los Angeles both posted near-record May container volumes. For IE warehouse operators, the exposure is a per-box cost squeeze, not a volume cliff.
California ordered 6 gigawatts of new power for data centers. The Inland Empire makes almost none of its own.
Citrus Belt Review: A PJM trade group told the eastern grid this month that the generation shortage is over — more than 130 GW of developers have raised their hands to build for data centers, and the only thing missing is signed contracts and transmission. Run that logic through the Inland Empire and it inverts. The corridor doesn't have a generation glut waiting on buyers. It has barely any generation at all.
Soda Mountain's approval signals the IE desert is becoming California's battery yard
Citrus Belt Review: In April, state regulators greenlit a roughly $700 million solar-and-storage project on 2,670 acres of San Bernardino County desert — up to 300 megawatts of solar paired with 300 megawatts of battery storage. It's the latest sign that the Inland Empire's clean-energy story isn't about generating power for itself so much as becoming the place California builds the storage its grid increasingly runs on — even as new state fire rules raise the bar on every battery that goes in.
54 Inland Empire census tracts rank in California's worst 1% for heavy-duty truck soot
Citrus Belt Review: A CARB mapping tool released in January 2026 ranks 54 Inland Empire census tracts in the statewide top 1% for fine-particle pollution from heavy-duty trucks — the first official tract-level cut of the warehouse trade's air cost.
CAISO's $6.7 billion plan builds for solar in the IE's high desert
Citrus Belt Review: The grid operator's new decade-long buildout names the corridor's own ground — the high desert's Kramer area in San Bernardino County, and Riverside County, both land on the list of solar zones the new transmission is meant to reach.