Envision Charlotte: Building an Energy Cluster (Abridged)

Abstract

Charlotte, North Carolina, was one of the leading economic centers in the south with a strong position as a headquarter city. Since the 1980s, the city had become increasingly reliant on a successful but also volatile financial service industry. In 2006, Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, began to lay the groundwork to establish Charlotte as the "new energy hub of America." The Envision Charlotte initiative builds on the Charlotte region's economic development "energy capital USA" initiative that was announced by North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue, city and business leaders in April 2009. Five years later, on October 28, 2011 he and more than 1,500 people celebrated the launch of Envision Charlotte, a first-in-the-nation smart grid plan aimed at reducing energy use in the central business district. With worries about a renewed downturn in the financial sector, Rogers and the other leaders in attendance hoped that rallying around a shared idea and supporting a civic initiative such as Envision was the formula for economic sustainability.