Hi All! We just completed a successful webinar series (held on 5/19/09 and 5/21/09) hosted by Economic Development Online as a part of their Executive Webinar Series. The topic was “Site Selection Trends of Today’s Thriving Industries.” You can download slides from the entire Power Point presentation below!
Site Selection Trends of Today’s Thriving Industries
The webinar covered a number of timely topics for economic developers, including:
• Understanding location/expansion trends — using information from our powerful location/expansion database, we discussed the downward trends of location activity nationally and regionally in recent years, particularly manufacturing projects. The good news here is that even during the recession there are still hundreds of locations that will take place in the near future!
• The HOT growth sectors of today — including renewable energy; data centers; creative media; software development; healthcare/medical devices; biotech/life sciences, and warehouse distribution (DC).
• The expected explosion of growth in the renewable energy market — world-wide investment is expected to top $325 billion by 2018. This includes $74 billion in US solar investment ($1 million investment will create 2 new solar jobs; you can do the math…thousands of new jobs!), and $83 billion in wind power investment.
• The need to focus on transferring traditional manufacturing jobs into new clean energy jobs — this will take careful planning with your economic development and work force leaders working together!
• Understanding growth sectors regionally — we explored location/expansion trends in two US regions to show that there is still good activity that will continue, including solar and wind power projects.
• Site selection criteria for both solar and wind power projects — access to market, skilled labor, reliable/cost efficient power, “green-minded communities” and, yes, incentives will all be important in order to compete!
• Doing the proper due diligence is important — successful economic developers will need to collect all the right information in order to show renewable companies that they are ready and excited about new green investment!
Let us know if we can help you to capture your fair share! Have a great day! Deane