States across the United States are competing to attract and retain the infrastructure, manufacturing, and energy assets required to support growing demand for electricity, advanced industry, and digital infrastructure. The global shift to an economy built on electricity and computerization represents a new economic development undertaking both for the United States as a whole and for individual states. These high-value industrial and infrastructure projects bring jobs, investment, and additional businesses, making them a worthwhile prize. But whereas most of these projects are commercially viable in the long term, some struggle to obtain private financing because they face permitting, market, infrastructure, or first-of-a-kind deployment risks.
Traditional state economic development attraction tools such as tax incentives and grant packages remain important, but they are generally designed to attract projects that are already financeable and to accelerate deployment of commercialized technologies. These tools are not built to rapidly adapt to the risk profile of the new technologies and businesses becoming central to the economy. A growing number of states are instead turning to state public investment and finance institutions to strategically reduce project risk, coordinate sector investment, and attract private capital for these types of projects. This report “Building the United States’ Electro-Industrial Economy” published by RMI examines how existing state financing institutions — including infrastructure banks, green banks, public investment funds, and development authorities — can expand their activities and strategies to support private investment in these emerging energy technologies.
Access the report here