ETEC passes its iconic bell to a new Chair
Congressman Chuck Fleischmann and Commissioner Stuart McWhorter also speak at the yearend meeting.
The end-of-year meeting for the East Tennessee Economic Council is a celebration of the previous 12 months as well as a change in the person who serves as Chair. Joe Heckman, President of the Waste Management Division at EnergySolutions, turned the iconic bell that is rung at the start of every weekly meeting over to incoming Chair Cortney Piper, President of Piper Communications.
Ahead of that passing of the bell, attendees also heard remarks from Stuart McWhorter, the State of Tennessee’s Commissioner of Economic and Community Development, Third District Congressman Chuck Fleischmann, and Tennessee Lt. Governor Randy McNally. The latter was the briefest, leading the Pledge of Allegiance.
Fleischmann asked and answered his own question about the atmosphere in Congress. “It’s contentious,” said, noting the razor-thin majority that will likely happen after some incumbent House of Representatives members join the new Trump Administration and are replaced.
“At the most, it will be a four- or five-seat majority,” he added.
That said, the Congressman said he had engaged on several occasions with Chris Wright, the designee to serve as Secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE), and reminded him that “in the DOE (world), all roads lead to Oak Ridge.
Commissioner McWhorter noted that the Department crossed the 600 project threshold since Governor Bill Lee took office nearly six years ago, and those projects have resulted in 100,000 new jobs.
“Ninety percent of the projects this year have been high-quality, high-paying jobs,” he added.
That said, the Commissioner noted a new trend as capital investment is outpacing new job creation, thanks to the availability of robots, advanced manufacturing, and other automation options.
Obviously, considering the audience and the prominence of nuclear energy these days, he mentioned the region’s assets, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), and noted investments from “Tennessee’s Nuclear Energy Fund” in two economic development projects – Orano USA and Type One Energy – and three universities for their educational programs – Roane State Community College, Tennessee Tech University, and UTK.
Commissioner McWhorter also noted that the demand for power to feed data centers and artificial intelligence “is changing the way we do economic development.” No where is that more apparent than the all private funding going into xAI’s announced plans to build the world’s fastest computer in Memphis.
Explaining that reports suggest it could be a project on the order of $30 to $100 billion, he said, “There is no state (incentive) involvement.”
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