Southwest Virginia has a legacy of driving energy production and manufacturing with its key role in the extractive economy. Metallurgical coal helped build America, while wells drilled over 60 years ago still produce natural gas today. As the United States moves toward carbon-neutral energy and our traditional industries decline as a result, Southwest Virginia has the opportunity to continue to be a leader in energy. We will get there by leveraging the region’s valuable assets and competing nationwide for entrepreneurs while focusing on innovative, clean and renewable projects.

These “big idea" projects will help maintain Southwest Virginia’s leadership position and support a public-private approach in the pursuit of investment-rated opportunities — sustainable, renewable models that can generate returns and ultimately deliver jobs and investment for the region:

• Project Energizer employs pumped-storage hydro technology on a small, affordable scale and provides an opportunity for Southwest Virginia to leverage its topography and be an innovator in renewable resources.

• Evolve Central Appalachia is exploring harvesting the industrial, environmental and economic potential of rare earth elements, critical minerals and high-value, nonfuel, carbon-based products – all out of waste coal.

• Project Veer is leveraging the advanced manufacturing legacy of Southwest Virginia to explore entry points for the region’s manufacturers into the onshore and offshore wind supply chains.

• Project Oasis validates Southwest Virginia as a location of choice in the Commonwealth for data centers based on power and broadband infrastructure as well as the use of innovative energy applications unique to our region. Building on the region’s competitive advantage, Southwest Virginia boasts the use of 52-degree mine pool water for HVAC cooling as a significant cost and energy-saving tool.

• Project Innovation determined a business model to accelerate innovative energy research moving at the speed of business while directing funds to the implementation of projects, not excessive overhead. As a result, Governor Youngkin announced the Energy DELTA Lab as a driver of the 2022 Virginia Energy Plan’s goals — a public-private multi-site energy testbed located in Southwest Virginia leveraging previously-mined land as a proving ground for the commercialization and deployment of energy technologies.

With each of these projects, this Authority’s work can help change the world, and we’ll do that with Southwest Virginia leadership and ingenuity. Of course, our work would not be possible without the support, expertise and funding from key education, public and private sector partners.