Energy & Manufacturing

For more than two centuries, American industry has harnessed the nation’s abundance of natural resources, energy, talent and ingenuity to power and unleash the most productive economy in the world.

Dramatic shifts spurred by globalization, recession, regulatory and tax trends, ascendant and increasingly advanced industrial activity across Europe and Asia and accelerating changes in consumer demand have buffeted America’s industrial and manufacturing enterprises, threatening America’s place as a global superpower. Yet today, America finds itself facing a new, promising frontier shaped by two powerful transformations working in tandem:

• The generational re-emergence of advanced and highly productive manufacturing capacity in the United States; and
• The increasing abundance of innovative, sustainable, affordable and domestically- sourced energy. 

To capitalize on this convergence, the Council on Competitiveness (Council) launched the Energy and Manufacturing Competitiveness Partnership (EMCP) in 2015, which leveraged more than a decade of leadership in the energy and manufacturing fields that began with the seminal National Innovation Initiative (NII) and continued most recently with the Energy Security, Innovation and Sustainability (ESIS) Initiative, the U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness Initiative (USMCI) and the American Energy and Manufacturing Competitiveness (AEMC) Partnership The EMCP, a C-suite-directed initiative, focused on the shifting global energy and manufacturing landscape and how energy transformation and demand are shaping industries critical to America’s prosperity and security.

Over a span of three years, the Council executed an ambitious roadmap to focus national attention on the intersection of the energy and manufacturing transformations. Recognizing the tremendous innovation and changing landscape across the manufacturing sector, from 3D printing to the proliferation of sensing devices and the use of advanced modeling and simulation tools, the EMCP was designed to approach the country’s diverse industrial land- scape as a network of distinct but interdependent productive sectors, each with its own challenges and opportunities. Through a series of sector studies hosted around the nation by members of the Steer- ing Committee, the EMCP identified the salient questions and challenges facing the energy-manufacturing nexus within key sectors of the economy.

Seeking input from leaders throughout the private sector, academia, the research and scientific community, NGOs and government, each of the six sector studies looked at how decision-makers can bolster the critical pillars of competitiveness-technology, talent, investment and infrastructure.

The picture painted by these sector studies is, from one perspective, bleak.

• The United States is plagued by outdated regulatory and physical infrastructure that is failing to keep pace with innovation in sectors from materials to aerospace and beyond.
• The absence of a coordinated, defined research agenda to guide insufficiently-funded research and development is limiting the potential for advancement in key sectors such as bioscience.
• Science has a perception problem that can only be combatted through increased scientific literacy.
• The skills gap is growing, and will continue to get worse as workforce demographics shift.
• And, while all this is happening at home in the United States, global competition is ramping up as countries around the world realize the advantages of investing in a strong innovation ecosystem.

EMCP Leadership

	Industry Co-Chair Mr. Christopher Crane President & CEO Exelon Corporation		National Laboratory Co-Chair Dr. William Goldstein  Director  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
	University Co-Chair The Honorable Rebecca Blank Chancellor University of Wisconsin - Madison