Veteran business executives, energy policy innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, and senior public officials from both parties, along with citizens, students, and the media, gathered in Las Vegas, Nevada for a day-long clean energy summit. NCES is an annual event hosted by the Center for American Progress, Clean Energy Project, MGM Resorts International, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. National Clean Energy Summit 4.0: The Future of Energy brought together the nation's top minds to chart the course for the future of energy in America.
How will consumers benefit from a clean energy future?
There has never been a more important time for Nevada and the nation to invest in this future. While trimming the federal budget deficit, we must also invest in the research, development, deployment, and commercialization of new products and technologies that will make Nevada and the United States a competitor in the $2 trillion global clean energy market.
The summit focused on our clean energy future. In the coming years, new homes and buildings will become increasingly energy efficient, contributing to more livable neighborhoods and sustainable communities. These buildings will use electricity more efficiently with a smarter electric grid. They will rely on electricity from the sun, wind, and geothermal sources generated throughout Nevada and the West. They will be connected to each other using better-designed roads and rails, traveled upon by a new wave of 21st century low-emission or carbon-free vehicles. National Clean Energy Summit 4.0: The Future of Energy laid out this path to a clean energy future.
Energy innovation isn't just an imperative for growing our economy-it's also vital to defending our nation. NCES 4.0 highlighted Department of Defense investments in renewable and efficiency technologies that will make our troops safer and spur the civilian clean tech sector to commercialize new technologies, just as they have with the Internet, engines, and microchips.
NCES 4.0 also sparked a conversation between Western state leaders on how to best take advantage of our vast regional resources to create new jobs, rebuild our economy, and ensure long-term prosperity.
Nevada is at the center of the movement to generate clean energy, leading the nation in per capita solar and geothermal generation. Since 2008, these dynamic Summits have become one of the country's most visible and influential gatherings of leaders and creative policymakers helping to bring about the transformation to a clean energy economy.