New Energy Economic Opportunity Bootcamp - Boulder
About this Event
About the Bootcamp
Register now to take advantage of our early bird registration!
The New Energy Economic Opportunity Bootcamp is a 1-day, in-person training and convening designed to equip economic development practitioners with the tools, data, and insights needed to attract and scale advanced energy and manufacturing investment.
Electricity demand is rising rapidly alongside growth in electrification, advanced manufacturing, data centers, and grid expansion—creating significant new opportunities for regional economic development. At the same time, the energy economy is evolving quickly, shaped by changing federal and state policies, shifting global supply chains, accelerating private-sector investment, and emerging workforce demands. For regions prepared to navigate this transition, the result is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to attract new industries, strengthen competitiveness, and create high-quality jobs.
In this training, participants will explore how regions can position themselves to benefit from these emerging opportunities across advanced energy, manufacturing, and data-driven industries—while managing infrastructure, workforce, and community impacts.
The Bootcamp combines expert-led sessions, interactive discussions, and networking opportunities, allowing participants to learn from national experts while connecting with peers tackling similar challenges.
Hosted at RMI in Boulder, Colorado on July 30 from 8:30am -5:30pm, the Bootcamp will bring together economic development organizations (EDOs), public sector leaders, and ecosystem partners for applied learning, peer exchange, and practical strategy development.
This program builds on a successful training series hosted by Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in 2024 and 2025. This is a refreshed evolution of past RMI bootcamps, redesigned to reflect current market conditions, policy shifts, and on-the-ground practitioner needs.
What You’ll Learn
Participants will gain practical insights into how to:
- Understand the current outlook for advanced energy and manufacturing markets
- Evaluate your region's competitive advantages and identify high potential growth opportunities
- Navigate federal and state policy incentives shaping investment decisions (spoiler: they're not all gone!)
- Plan for utility-scale clean energy deployment to ensure projects have access to reliable power
- Manage the economic and infrastructure impacts of data centers and other large energy loads
- Assess workforce pipeline needs and target industries that can create durable, high-quality jobs
- Support and attract innovative energy startups and emerging technology companies
Who Should Attend
This Bootcamp is designed for:
- State, regional and local economic development practitioners
- State and local government officials
- Workforce development practitioners
- Utility and infrastructure planners
- Industry ecosystem partners
- Community and regional planning leaders
Event Format
This 1-day bootcamp includes:
- Expert-led presentations
- Interactive learning modules
- Peer discussion
- Networking opportunities
- A hosted reception
Participants will leave with actionable tools, frameworks, and strategies that can be applied directly in their regional economic development work.
Agenda
🕑: 08:00 AM - 08:30 AM
Breakfast
🕑: 08:30 AM - 09:00 AM
Welcome & Opening Remarks
Info: RMI welcome and regional speaker
🕑: 09:00 AM - 09:45 AM
New Energy Market Outlook
Host: Julia Meisel and Jon Ekberg, RMI
Info: Why does advanced energy matter for regional economic development right now? What is the current state of play for global and US advanced energy and manufacturing markets, what opportunities do they present for economic developers, and which sectors are poised for growth? Participants will leave this session with an understanding of how advanced energy drives regional economic development.
🕑: 09:45 AM - 10:30 AM
Assessing Your Regional Economic Development Strengths
Host: Aaron Brickman and Ben Feshbach, RMI
Info: This session will equip participants with a practical framework to identify catalytic new energy economic development opportunities. Grounded in RMI’s Clean Growth Tool and illustrated through our work in Alabama, Ohio, and Iowa, the session demonstrates RMI's approach to evaluating market readiness, prioritizing target sectors, and translating analysis into actionable economic development strategies.
🕑: 10:15 AM - 10:30 AM
Break
🕑: 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM
Navigating Today’s Federal Policy Landscape
Host: Ellie Garland, RMI
Info: The shift from incentive-driven policies under the Inflation Reduction Act to protectionist policies under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has created new challenges as well as new opportunities for advanced energy manufacturers. This session will highlight federal opportunities for new energy manufacturing including full expensing, the Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit (45X), Foreign Entity of Concern requirements, the Department of Energy’s Energy Dominance Financing Program, Qualified Opportunity Zones, and a range of critical minerals incentives.
🕑: 11:15 AM - 12:00 PM
Building Faster: Winning Projects in a Power Constrained World
Info: While abundant power is increasingly a prerequisite for manufacturers, projects often face costly delays tied to siting disputes, permitting timelines, interconnection queue backlogs, supply chain constraints, and complexities in off-take and financing. This module examines how approval timelines, community engagement, and legal processes affect project viability and highlights six actionable state and local “Building Faster” strategies: establishing energy zones, standardizing review processes, enabling local overrides, prohibiting blanket bans, creating targeted project exemptions, and consolidating authority through centralized state-level siting and permitting entities.
🕑: 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Lunch and paired walk
🕑: 01:00 PM - 01:45 PM
State Approaches to Identify and Drive New Energy Investments
Host: Molly Freed, RMI
Info: As the federal landscape shifts, state incentive strategies play an increasingly important role in attracting manufacturing. In this session, participants will explore how states can strategically deploy financing mechanisms and incentive packages to overcome cost barriers, infrastructure constraints, and market uncertainty. Participants will learn how states can rely less heavily on grants and gap-filling capital and move toward green and infrastructure bank strategies to more cost-effectively and transparently support scaling new industries. This session will also take a closer look at North Carolina–specific incentives and approaches available to state-level economic development practitioners.
🕑: 01:45 PM - 02:30 PM
Building Bigger: Managing the Impacts of Data Centers and Other L
Host: Jasmine Chiu, RMI
Info: Data centers present a range of risks and opportunities for communities. Although data centers can provide economic benefits like local tax revenue, these large loads can also strain infrastructure, raise utility bills, reduce grid reliability, and spark opposition. Fortunately, economic developers and other stakeholders can play a critical role in advancing solutions to manage the impacts of large loads and reduce financial risks for local residents. This session outlines several of these strategies including co-location of renewables and storage, cost allocation, flexible load planning, and smart grid solutions, and highlights the economic development benefits of these strategies and the EDO role of early engagement with key stakeholders.
🕑: 02:45 PM - 03:30 PM
Building Stronger: Creating a New Energy Workforce
Host: Meredith Cowart, RMI
Info: The United States is currently experiencing a manufacturing labor shortage, and this gap is especially acute in advanced energy, semiconductors, electrification, and related sectors. In this session, participants will examine the core skills and occupations driving advanced energy and manufacturing growth and how workforce incentives and industrial policy design can support the development of a ready workforce.
🕑: 03:15 PM - 04:30 PM
Igniting Innovation: Attracting New Energy Startups
Host: Jamie Hankins, Third Derivative, RMI
Info: Startups can be engines of innovation, talent attraction, and future industry clusters -- yet working with startups requires a different approach than working with large incumbents. In this session, participants will discuss attraction strategies, expansion considerations, and retention strategies for start-ups. This session will also include direct engagement with a cleantech startup that has navigated conversations with economic development organizations, offering candid insights into what works, what doesn’t, and what makes a region truly startup friendly.
🕑: 04:30 PM - 04:45 PM
Workshop Wrap-up
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 35.00 to USD 65.00
