Domestic Economic Growth Fueled by the Energy, Materials, Manufacturing Nexus

Manufacturing, energy and advanced materials are a tightly bound set of issues that stand to advance our economy through job growth, entrepreneurship and technology innovation. A year and a half ago, in support of the Administration’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, the Department of Energy’s Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative (CEMI) was created to bring together a wide array of relevant Department of Energy offices, federal agencies, research institutions, and private sector partners to map out and implement a strategy to ensure that U.S. manufacturers are competitive in the global marketplace.

On Wednesday, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and Assistant Secretary David Danielson kicked off the 2014 American Energy and Manufacturing Competitiveness Summit - an annual capstone event to identify key opportunities that the public and private sectors can address to enhance U.S. clean energy manufacturing competitiveness celebrate the progress of CEMI and to provide forward looking objectives for the Department. In this morning’s remarks there was a clear theme that achieving our desired objectives will require a closer examination of how energy, advanced materials and manufacturing all work together and that CEMI is positioned to play a lead role.

Three examples from today’s announcements that reflect this connection include:

• On energy productivity, the DOE announced Accelerate Energy Productivity 2030  - a national effort to grow our economy while reducing our energy costs. DOE will lead this effort and engage leaders from the private sector and state and local governments to work together toward achieving President Obama’s goal of doubling U.S. energy productivity by 2030.
• On manufacturing innovation, nearly $23 million of new support was announced for 12 projects across the country to advance technologies aimed at helping American manufacturers dramatically increase the energy efficiency of their manufacturing facilities, lower costs and develop new manufacturing technologies.
• On advanced materials, the DOE issued a strong call to action to bring the Administration’s Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) closer to the manufacturing floor by focusing more effort on the invention and development of materials that are "born qualified" for commercial supply chains. MGI is an effort launched by President Obama in 2011 to double the pace of advanced materials discovery, innovation, manufacture and commercialization.

We are in the midst of an extremely dynamic period for domestic manufacturing and so are excited to see this momentum build for Clean Energy Manufacturing and related programs like MGI. This summit is a great example of public and private sectors joining together to create innovative solutions to drive manufacturing competitiveness and economic growth.  More information on today’s announcements can be found here.

Cyrus Wadia is the Assistant Director for Clean Energy and Manufacturing R&D at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Elizabeth Wayman is the Director of the Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative and Senior Advisor at the Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.