Following the lead of a number of tech companies such as Thnks, Yoshi,
Smart Pension and Conquest Cyber, monitoring and automation company
Energybox is moving its HQ from New Jersey to metro Nashville. As
documented in filings with the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury,
the IoT company expects 25% of employees to relocate to Tennessee, and
qualified for a $1 million FastTrack job training assistance grant from
the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.
Reporting in Hypepotamus states that the Greater Nashville Technology
Council estimates that there are over 64,000 tech workers in the region,
with a recent study from urbanist Richard Florida suggesting that
Nashville has seen the highest rise in the number of college-educated
residents of any city.
In June Millborn Seeds of Brookings was approved for a REDI fund loan of
$2.2 million from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development that
will be used for this major expansion of storage space, loading docks,
and equipment to handle, clean, package and distribute more seeds. The
company’s specialists work with farmers across the nation in such areas
as forage, cover crops, conservation, wildlife, turf and commercial. A
2021 study by Decision Innovation Solutions found that South Dakota
reaps $11.7 billion in total value added and 129,753 jobs from
agriculture, agri-food, forestry, and related economic activity,
including $3.3 billion and 30,817 jobs from crop production and related
industries.
The 12th annual National Solar Jobs Census was
released last week by the Interstate Renewable Energy
Council (IREC). Solar energy jobs were up in 47 states and
increased 9% nationwide from 2020 to 2021 to a total of
255,037 solar workers, the census reports. “This job growth
took place in a year of record solar installations driven by
increased demand for renewable energy among residential
customers, municipalities, businesses, and electric
utilities,” IREC stated. “Overall, the solar industry added
21,563 jobs in 2021, with more than two-thirds of these new
jobs (14,350) at installation and project development
firms.”
PHOTO OF THE
DAY
Photo courtesy of FPL
As part of its recently announced “Real Zero” goal to decarbonize
operations no later than 2045, Next Era Energy plans to grow the amount
of solar generation on the Florida Power & Light system from nearly
4,000 MW from 15 million solar panels today to more than 90,000 MW from
hundreds of millions of solar panels. “Economic studies indicate that
reaching NextEra Energy’s Real Zero goal could create up to 150,000 jobs
and add $15 billion in annual gross domestic product (GDP) in Florida
through 2045,” said a June release. NextEra Energy Resources operates
the world’s largest clean energy portfolio, with a generating capacity
of 24,000 MW of renewable energy from the wind and the sun.
