Advanced Energy Perspectives

Today, the United States faces a period of economic anxiety brought about by widening inequality, globalization, and technological transformation, made all the more acute by a global pandemic. This anxiety has heightened political appeals to prioritize domestic industry, combat economic adversaries, and protect American jobs. The advanced energy industry is uniquely positioned to help address this anxiety by creating middle-class jobs throughout the United States in a sector that’s poised for sustained and accelerating growth as the global economy transitions to clean, reliable, affordable resources. But it will take policy leadership to make the United States the arsenal of advanced energy prosperity. Here’s how.

When most people think about electric cars and California, they think about Tesla. The buzzy automaker was the first all-electric vehicle (EV) company to reach mass production. Having grown significantly over the past decade, the company now employs over 30,000 workers in California between the solar-storage-EV company’s corporate headquarters in Palo Alto and EV assembly factory in Fremont. But there’s a quieter yet equally important story of EV industry growth unfolding in nearly every corner of the state.

A few weeks ago, the Biden administration unveiled a $2 trillion plan to overhaul U.S. infrastructure. The American Jobs Plan included $174 billion for vehicle electrification to expedite the transportation industry’s shift away from fossil fuels. This funding targets the production of not only vehicles, but battery technologies, component parts, and raw materials used across the entire electric vehicle supply chain. That’s because electric vehicles (EVs) are different – and therein lies an opportunity for businesses, workers, and entire states to join the U.S. auto industry as transportation goes electric. One of those states is Illinois, where see the beginning of an electric transportation (ET) industry already in place, and poised to grow.

As we learned from the Advanced Energy Now 2021 Market Report, the U.S. market for advanced energy products and services proved remarkably resilient in 2020, despite the disruptions of COVID-19. Excluding Ethanol – a large but volatile slice of the domestic market that flipped from record 2019 revenue to 2020 crash – U.S. advanced energy revenue grew roughly 8% per year in both 2019 and 2020. But the COVID impact on employment was more severe, at one point accounting for the loss of more than 600,000 jobs. Still, at 3.2 million jobs nationwide at the end of 2020, advanced energy employs more U.S. workers than Food & Beverage Stores and twice as many as Commercial Banks. What’s more: advanced energy jobs are on the rebound, and ready to scale up for a national push for clean energy and jobs.

As President Biden hit his 50-day mark in office, his administration remains committed to keeping campaign promises to stimulate economic growth through development of clean energy sources that address the challenge of climate change. With new leadership appointed by Biden, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is taking a fresh look at the relationship between states and regional wholesale markets. And the Democratic majority in Congress is gearing up for a recovery and infrastructure package that could stimulate investment in advanced energy resources on a large scale. All this adds up to a new day in Washington, D.C., for the advanced energy industry. What that new day looks like was the subject of a recent webinar featuring AEE policy experts and speakers representing advanced energy developers and buyers.