(Toledo, Ohio) - The Council on Competitiveness and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) held the second in a series of high-level dialogues on the campus of the University of Toledo, Ohio.
The dialogues are being held across the country as part of the American Energy and Manufacturing Competitiveness Partnership (AEMC); a three-year effort to bring together national leaders to address a rapidly shifting national and global energy landscape.
The University of Toledo was selected as a location for an AEMC dialogue due to critical lessons being learned from the materials and glass-based industries in Northwest Ohio, which have historically played an important role in the region’s industrial sector; but today play a new role in accelerating Toledo’s evolution from the “glass city” to a thriving cluster of solar energy research and manufacturing.
Today’s discussion brought together industry, academia, labor, the national laboratories, government and the non-profit community. Leading the discussion were Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Assistant Secretary, David Danielson; Council President & CEO, Deborah Wince-Smith; and University of Toledo President and dialogue host Lloyd Jacobs.
“The United States’ strong manufacturing tradition provides tremendous potential for advancing American competitiveness in industries like solar manufacturing,” said Dr. Danielson. “Through innovative approaches we can create new opportunities for companies and communities to transition to the clean energy economy and increase manufacturing of clean energy products and processes.”
The driver behind Toledo’s current silicon-based industrial transformation has been the power of public-private-partnerships (PPPs) which have included the University of Toledo, industry and the public sector. All have aligned for success in Northwest Ohio to provide a clear roadmap for the revitalization of other manufacturing-based industries.
“Toledo and Northwest Ohio are clearly competing for the future in solar energy research and manufacturing,” said Deborah Wince-Smith, President and CEO, Council on Competitiveness. “Seeing how this region is successfully leveraging its deep manufacturing history and technical expertise – embodied in the University of Toledo, local businesses and government – to re-emerge as a 21st century global competitor in the energy space is exciting. And understanding how to start up and scale up similar transformations across the nation is exactly what the AEMC Partnership is attempting to achieve.”
“We are proud of the University of Toledo and that the partnerships we have been a part of over the last several years have become a success story from which other states and regions can learn,” said Jacobs. “This unprecedented time in our country’s energy history has opened a window for us to seize on opportunities to create a climate for long-term productivity and prosperity through investments in clean energy and clean energy manufacturing – and harnessing the power of PPPs is the method that’s taking us there.”
The focus of the Council-EERE AEMC Partnership is two-fold: (1) to increase U.S. competitiveness in the production of clean energy products; and (2) to increase U.S. manufacturing competitiveness across the board by increasing energy productivity.
Over the coming year, the Council and EERE will work together across the country in the AEMC Partnership to define key barriers, challenges and problems in the manufacturing of clean energy products and energy efficient products – and then generate potential models for scalable, public-private partnerships, to increase the competitive manufacturing of clean energy and energy efficient products in the United States.
The AEMC Partnership will convene two additional regional dialogues this year – the next of which will take place in August at the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, NY. The AEMC Partnership with culminate in a major, annual, Washington DC-based, energy and manufacturing summit on December 12th.
ABOUT THE COUNCIL ON COMPETITIVENESS
The Council on Competitiveness is the only group of corporate CEOs, university presidents and labor leaders committed to the future prosperity of all Americans and enhanced U.S. competitiveness in the global economy through the creation of high-value economic activity in the United States. The Council is a non-partisan and non-governmental organization.
For more information, see the Council’s website and a full list of publications at www.compete.org.