Every Major Project Shapes the Community Around It.
Major investments can create jobs, strengthen the tax base, and expand opportunity, while also affecting infrastructure, public services, land use, and the cost and reliability of power. NAEC helps ensure community and civic perspectives are considered alongside energy, industry, capital, workforce, and public-policy priorities, giving leaders a fuller understanding of the opportunities, risks, and tradeoffs.
Community confidence is one condition among many that NAEC examines.
NAEC studies the conditions that shape American energy and commerce: energy capacity, infrastructure readiness, capital, workforce, policy, economic competitiveness, and community confidence. Community is one dimension of that platform, not the whole of it.
Most trade associations represent a single industry and advance a single agenda. NAEC's three-sector model, spanning private industry, public officials, and community and civic leadership, gives members a fuller picture than any single-industry association can provide.
A public-engagement or advocacy organization
An activist or watchdog group organizing against development
A voice for or against any individual project
A single-industry trade association
A national platform examining the conditions shaping American growth
Independent research spanning industry, policy, workforce, and community perspectives
A three-sector leadership structure: private industry, public officials, and community leadership
A resource members and policymakers use to see the full picture
NAEC does not organize communities against responsible development, and it does not speak for or against individual projects. It brings broader public, economic, workforce, and industry perspectives into research and leadership discussions so members and policymakers can better understand the conditions shaping American growth.
Three things NAEC promises communities, in writing
We publish our research openly, cite our sources, and disclose who funds NAEC's work.
No hidden sponsors driving a predetermined conclusion. If a member company has a stake in a specific project, that's disclosed.
We share studies, trends, and interviews that inform decisions, not just industry talking points.
Our Economic Competitiveness research covers energy access, infrastructure, and workforce readiness at the national and state level, available to community leaders and the public alike.
Community leaders sit on NAEC's National Leadership Council as full participants, not advisors brought in after decisions are made.
The Community sector stands alongside private industry and public officials as one of NAEC's three founding pillars.
The people who understand a community best are the people who live there.
NAEC's National Leadership Council includes senior corporate leaders, investors, public officials, and respected community figures, not as a courtesy seat, but because community and civic leaders hold expertise no one else can supply. They know how economic change is actually felt locally, where public information falls short, which workforce needs are emerging, and how national priorities affect the families, employers, and neighborhoods they represent every day.
Their presence also runs in both directions. Community and civic leaders gain direct exposure to the economic, technical, financial, and workforce realities shaping major American investment, insight they carry back to the neighborhoods and offices they serve. That exchange is what makes NAEC's research and leadership discussions more accurate than an industry-only conversation could produce.
Reliable energy is the foundation of security, opportunity, and everyday life.
Every family's sense of stability, and every community's path to opportunity, connects back to the same foundation: a reliable, affordable supply of power. Chris Hogan, Chairman of the National Leadership Council, has spent his career educating the public on financial stability, job growth, and American opportunity, and he traces all of it back to the same source: reliable power providers and a healthy commerce environment.
RELIABLE
AFFORDABLE
POWER
HOME &
FAMILY SECURITY
JOB GROWTH &
ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
MANUFACTURING
& INDUSTRY
HEALTHCARE
SYSTEMS
RESEARCH &
INNOVATION
TRANSPORTATION
NETWORKS
FARMING &
AGRICULTURE
COMMUNICATIONS
INFRASTRUCTURE
When power is reliable and affordable, every sector that depends on it, from the kitchen table to the factory floor, has room to grow. NAEC studies these connections so that industry, government, and communities can plan for growth with the same understanding of what is actually at stake.
The jobs behind the diagram
These sectors do not just depend on power. They employ tens of millions of Americans who depend on it working every day.
Manufacturing jobs nationwide, nearly all of them running on a continuous, reliable supply of electricity
Healthcare and social assistance jobs, from hospitals to home care, that cannot function without uninterrupted power
Transportation and warehousing jobs moving the goods that power, in turn, keeps moving
Farm jobs relying on electricity for irrigation, storage, processing, and modern equipment
Professional, scientific, and technical services jobs, the research and innovation economy running on data centers and connected systems
Information sector jobs supporting the communications infrastructure that keeps homes, businesses, and emergency systems connected
Together, these sectors alone account for more than 55 million American jobs, all of them resting on the same foundation: power that works when it is needed. Figures are approximate and reflect current government data.
The pattern already works. It just needs to scale.
Across the country, communities that partner early with energy and infrastructure providers are seeing the difference in real numbers.
In cumulative federal grid funding awarded to 104 projects across 42 states to strengthen reliability against extreme weather
Construction and extraction job openings projected each year through 2034 as America builds, repairs, and expands the infrastructure that communities and businesses depend upon.
Local jobs created through one utility's economic development partnerships with its home community since 2016
Invested directly in host communities in a single year by one energy developer, funding schools, emergency services, and local wages
NAEC studies partnerships like these to understand what is working, and to help more communities and companies replicate it.
A structured way for industry and communities to work together from the start
NAEC connects its corporate members with the local governments, economic development organizations, and community and tribal organizations in their operating areas, using a consistent framework built for collaboration rather than an ad hoc outreach effort.
Social License Framework
A model set of community engagement practices covering timing, communication, and how to collect and respond to feedback, available for member companies to adopt on major projects.
Community benefit agreement templates
Plain-language starting templates covering local hiring commitments, workforce training partnerships, and community investment, so agreements aren't drafted from scratch or left vague.
Community college and workforce partnerships
Direct connections between member employers and local community colleges and technical schools, so training programs are built around real, local hiring plans.
Tribal nation engagement
Dedicated protocols for engaging tribal nations and indigenous community organizations as sovereign partners, not as one more stakeholder group in a general outreach list.
Better intelligence comes from understanding the whole environment.
Through its research, interviews, leadership forums, public data, and national leadership network, NAEC works to identify how these forces connect.
NAEC is also building a national participation network designed to reach opted-in households for research, education, polling, and stakeholder feedback as that capability comes online. Combined with the experience of executives, investors, public officials, workforce leaders, and community representatives, that reach will give NAEC a broader foundation for understanding how America's energy and commerce economy is changing.
NAEC is not built for one side of the table.
NAEC offers broader visibility into the public, workforce, policy, infrastructure, and economic conditions surrounding American investment.
NAEC provides access to credible information and the perspectives of those who finance, build, operate, insure, and employ within the modern economy.
NAEC helps explain how energy, infrastructure, workforce, manufacturing, technology, capital, and national competitiveness connect.
The result is not guaranteed consensus. It is a stronger foundation for informed leadership, responsible growth, and durable economic opportunity.
Local knowledge strengthens national research.
Community and civic leaders see conditions on the ground before national data catches up. NAEC welcomes that perspective as an input to its research agenda and leadership discussions, not as a complaint line about individual companies or projects.
Ways to contribute
Share observations about regional energy, workforce, or infrastructure trends
Request a copy of NAEC's current research for your region or sector
Ask about bringing NAEC's collaboration framework to your community
Community confidence is one part of a bigger picture.
NAEC is building a national leadership platform for the people who invest, govern, build, finance, train, employ, and strengthen communities across three sectors: private industry, public officials, and community leadership.