2027 Event Agenda

The ongoing workforce crisis in the U.S. energy sector has reached a critical inflection point, threatening our nation's economic growth and technological future. The demand for skilled labor is being supercharged by a trifecta of challenges: the monumental task of upgrading America's aging energy infrastructure, the rapid expansion of renewables, and the explosive, grid-scale energy demands of the AI revolution. This unprecedented demand is on a direct collision course with a demographic collapse, as data from the Center for Energy Workforce Development shows nearly a quarter of our skilled utility workforce is eligible to retire within five years, and the scale of the shortfall is staggering. While investment pours into the future, including a projected $3 trillion AI building boom, the necessary human capital is absent: 2025 research from Goldman Sachs projects the U.S. power sector requires over 500,000 new workers by 2030, while a Johns Hopkins SAIS study forecasts the need for over one million new clean energy jobs in the same timeframe. If we do not act decisively, we will fail to build the modern, reliable grid required for America's future. This panel session directly confronts this national challenge by convening an unprecedented coalition of stakeholders. For the first time, we bring the architects of both energy supply and demand to the same table: senior leaders from a hyperscale data center developer, major power utilities, the renewable energy sector, a major service contractor, and academia. This session moves beyond problem identification to lay the groundwork for a collaborative, cross-industry alliance.
Key discussion points will include:

• Confronting the Data & Diverse Impacts: Analyzing of the gap between the projected need for over a million new workers and the reality of our shrinking talent pipeline. This discussion will highlight the unique pressures each sector faces, from a utility's struggle to replace retiring field personnel and adopt digital substations, to a hyperscale developer's imperative for timely grid connections, and the renewable sector's bottleneck in project execution due to labor shortages.
• Bridging the Skills Gap: Exploring essential, co-developed frameworks for curricula, advanced apprenticeships, and training programs to close the widening gap between academic preparation and the real-world competencies the industry desperately needs.
• Forging a New Energy Alliance: Identifying the next steps and collaborative opportunities to move towards a sustainable cross-industry alliance. This will involve pinpointing shared priorities for initial pilot programs, outlining potential mechanisms for knowledge exchange, and exploring avenues for unified advocacy to address the workforce imperative across all sectors.

This session is designed not as a retrospective, but as the essential crucible for an unavoidable, cross-industry dialogue. We must collectively define and build the resilient workforce required to power America's future, and this conversation is where that work begins.