Regional officials on Wednesday celebrated an initiative they hope will position Hampton Roads as a national leader in energy innovation.
The new Secure Energy Future Center, located at Virginia Tech’s corporate research park in Newport News, is intended as a hub for training and research.
Doug Smith, president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Alliance, said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony that the concept “was built around a very simple idea.”
“Our region wins when we lean into what we already do better than anywhere else: defense, energy, aerospace, logistics,” Smith said. “The demand for reliable, secure and innovative energy is accelerating, driven by everything from national security to economic growth, and that's where this center comes in.”
The project received $2.7 million in seed funding from the state’s GO Virginia program, including a $1.2 million local match from Virginia Tech and partners, including construction company W.M. Jordan, federal contractor ITA International and the city of Newport News.
The 2,500-square-foot space includes classrooms, meeting rooms and an interactive “energy exhibit” featuring a theater-sized screen. The city also owns about 27 acres of adjacent land that could be developed for research needs.
“It is a platform for action,” said Mayor Phillip Jones, “designed to bring together industry, government and entrepreneurs to solve real-world energy challenges and move solutions from development right here into the marketplace.”
Virginia is on the brink of an energy crisis. The state is seeing the largest growth in demand since World War II and is projected to see exponentially more in the next few decades, largely because of power-hungry data centers.
Managing director Chelsea Olivieri said the Secure Energy Future Center will serve partially as a business incubator, giving energy companies space to test their ideas and connecting them with local experts, such as at neighboring Jefferson Lab.
Another big focus is training and workforce development. The center’s already offering an eight-session energy education course, after which participants earn a certificate from Virginia Tech.
Olivieri said the energy business can be siloed.
“People didn't understand the interconnectedness of the energy system. They either thought about solar, or they only thought about wind or they only thought about energy efficiency, without understanding that we need all of them and they all work together.”
In recent years, local leaders heard from those in the energy industry that they were struggling to grow and scale.
“Energy availability was a challenge and affordability was becoming a challenge, and they didn't have anywhere to go to connect all the dots,” Olivieri said. “Just understanding what's happening with the energy system is very difficult, and we're part of a regional energy system. So we realized just the basic energy literacy wasn't there.”
Smith said that extends to city leaders, who decide which energy projects are permitted and zoned, and often have to quickly learn about complicated topics.
One of the center's projects focuses on nuclear power.
The Virginia team connected with TerraPower, a Bill Gates-led company working to build the nation’s first commercial small modular nuclear reactor in Wyoming.
Virginia Tech received $1 million from the Virginia Clean Energy Innovation Bank to install a simulator of TerraPower’s reactor control room at a university research center in Arlington, which would be replicated at the Newport News site to train the nuclear workforce.
