Matt Burns

A family of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni has made an $18 million gift to the school’s College of Arts & Sciences to more than double the size of its nationally recognized undergraduate entrepreneurship program, officials said Tuesday. The pledge from the Shuford family of Hickory is the largest single one-time gift by a living individual or family to the college, officials said. It will be used to fund three more entrepreneurs-in-residence and up to four faculty fellows, and will create up to 70 student internships at entrepreneurial firms worldwide and a lecture series on innovation...

A week after Volvo picked a South Carolina site for its first U.S. manufacturing plant, economic developers from across North Carolina were in Raleigh on Tuesday to press lawmakers for the tools they say they need not only to recruit such large projects but also to be in the running for smaller business relocations and expansions. “In order to keep North Carolina growing, we must maintain and strengthen a performance-based, self-funded Job Development Investment Grant program,” said Michael Smith, executive director of Statesville Regional Development and president of the North Carolina Economic Developers Association. WRAL TechWire Editor’s Opinion: CEOs...

For the second time in two years, a House committee has turned out the lights on an effort to scale back North Carolina’s requirements that utilities use renewable sources to generate a specific portion of the power they provide. Reps. Nelson Dollar and Chris Malone were among several Republicans who joined Democrats to vote down House Bill 681 by a 14-15 margin. In 2007, North Carolina became the first state in the Southeast to adopt a Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard, requiring utility companies to acquire a growing percentage of their power from renewable sources. The REPS requirements basically force electric customers...

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Wednesday received its largest individual donation ever, a $100 million commitment to its Eshelman School of Pharmacy. The pledge from Fred Eshelman, a 1972 UNC-Chapel Hill graduate who founded both Pharmaceutical Product Development and Furiex Pharmaceuticals, will help create the Eshelman Institute for Innovation, providing faculty with new resources to engage in research and teaching, with the goal of spurring economic development. Furiex recently was sold for more than $1.4 billion to Forest Labs. “Collaborative public-private investments like this new institute will drive the future of innovation at Carolina,” Chancellor...

Days after his party leadership shot down his proposal to freeze and repeal the state’s renewable energy standards, Rep. Mike Hager, R-Rutherford, is making a second run at moving the bill to the House floor. House Bill 298 was voted down in the House Committee on Public Utilities and Energy, which Hager chairs, last Wednesday. Powerful Republican Reps. Tim Moore, Ruth Samuelson, Nelson Dollar and others joining Democrats in opposing the measure. Hager has put the bill back on the calendar for Wednesday for reconsideration. The legislation would end the set-asides and subsidies for solar energy, wind energy and...