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 and large market cap developers while focusing on innovative and clean energy 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. The Authority is engaged in a robust project portfolio representing a spectrum of technologies and related industrial operations, including solar, wind, hydrogen, energy storage, pumped-storage hydro, energy efficient data centers and other emerging energy technologies, such as small modular reactors.

With each of these projects, this Authority’s work can help diversity Southwest Virginia’s economy and help the Commonwealth of Virginia and the nation achieve energy goals, and we’ll do that with Southwest Virginia leadership and ingenuity as well as support, expertise and funding from key private sector, government, education and community partners.