Advanced Energy Perspectives

Thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the advanced energy industry is about to take off. With the stage set for rapid industry expansion, it’s vital to know what jobs will become available and who will have access to them. Thanks to a new analysis of jobs advertised and filled in the past year and a half, we now know, at a granular level, that advanced energy growth offers job opportunities for workers with many different backgrounds – but could pose a challenge in filling the jobs needed to fulfill that growth.

Labor Day 2022 is like none other for the advanced energy industry. It arrives after two years of COVID-related retrenchment and recovery and nearly a year of policy upheaval at the federal level, with threats of solar trade restrictions and climate and clean energy legislation seemingly stalled. Then, last month, came the Inflation Reduction Act which, when combined with the smaller but, in retrospect, complementary Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act a year earlier, provides $444 billion for investment in advanced energy. That direct investment of federal dollars will, we estimate, attract $1.2 trillion in private investment, for a total boost of $2.8 trillion for the U.S. economy. And that means one more big thing: jobs.

AEE welcomed three advanced energy industry leaders to its Board of Directors this month, representing longtime Leader-level member companies: Sarah Webster of Pattern Energy, Suzanne Leta of SunPower Corp., and Brianne Miller of Microsoft.

Jeff Bishop, CEO and Co-founder of Key Capture Energy, has been named to the Board of Directors of AEE. Based in Albany, NY, Key Capture Energy is one of America’s largest owner-operators of standalone battery storage projects. The first corporate leader from the fast-growing energy storage sector of the advanced energy industry, Bishop was voted onto the Board at its meeting last week.

After nearly two years of pandemic paralysis, the new worry about the U.S. economy is inflation. After a long period of stability, prices are up, taking a bite out of household spending power. And as usual when prices rise, some of the most visible evidence can be found at the gas pump and in heating bills. But the spike in these energy prices shouldn’t be thought of as inflation at all. Rather, it’s a function of volatility, which is an inherent feature of fossil fuels. The answer to this price volatility is not found in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, gasoline-tax holidays, or interest-rate increases. The solution is advanced energy.