Allegheny Conference CEO: Region can be energy center

McMURRAY - When Dennis Yablonsky talks about energizing the economy of Western Pennsylvania, he quickly tells his audience his message is two-pronged.

On Friday, Yablonsky, who is chief executive officer of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, told about 150 members of the Washington County Chamber of Commerce he wasn't there just to get them "jazzed up" about looking for business opportunities beyond the current recession.

During a brief presentation at Rolling Hills Country Club, he also offered a compelling argument for the role energy itself can play in making the region an economic powerhouse.

He added that Washington County, the headquarters of coal and gas giant Consol Energy and a center for the development of the Marcellus Shale natural gas exploration, is already playing a major role in the energy equation for a successful economy.

Yablonsky, who took the helm of ACCD a year ago after six years as secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Community & Economic Development, oversees three divisions responsible for furthering economic development in a 10-county region: The Pittsburgh Regional Authority, the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce and the Economy League of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

The conference scored a major coup last year when President Barack Obama brought the G20 economic summit to Pittsburgh. Yablonsky said the summit, which drew journalists from around the world, resulted in the publication of 7,000 stories written about the Pittsburgh region's three-decade transformation from a steel and coal center into a diversified high-tech, advanced health care and higher education center.

But the best part of the continuing success story, Yablonsky said, is that the region now stands ready to position itself as a national energy center, with its massive stores of coal and natural gas, the country's only domestic manufacturer of nuclear technology and scores of companies involved with manufacturing components for alternative energy sources like solar and wind. Major corporate players headquartered in the region include Consol Energy, PPG and Westinghouse as well as a host of corporate, university and government research and development programs dedicated to energy and a massive supply chain to support the industry here.

According to Yablonsky, the Allegheny Conference has identified 700 companies in the region related to the energy business, easily placing Western Pennsylvania in the "top 25" regions in energy production in the United States, with coal and natural gas the obvious traditional drivers.

He noted that Pennsylvania leads the nation in the development of shallow gas wells, "and when you add in the development of the Marcellus Shale wells, we're off the charts."

The ACCD study also found that the Pittsburgh region is one of three regions in the country "that can claim high job concentration in all of the sectors of energy," including employment in engineering, manufacturing, supply chain and extraction of natural resources, Yablonsky said. He added that the region is also a stronghold for companies working in power transmission and infrastructure as well as those leading the way in energy efficient, "green" building design.

"We are also an energy research center," he added, noting that $1.5 billion is spent annually on energy-related research and that the expenditures range from those spent by major energy companies like Consol, Westinghouse and PPG, plus money spent at Pitt, Carnegie Mellon, Penn State and West Virginia universities, and the National Energy Technology Lab, a federal research center in Library.

When all of the assets are added together, Yablonsky said, the Pittsburgh region is the only one in the country that has all of them, from natural resources to research and power generation.

The goal of the conference, he said, is to create a unified program for promoting the region as an energy center, something it has done with the December launch of the "Energy Alliance of Greater Pittsburgh" that includes 14 CEOs of energy-related companies as well as a number of nonprofits.

He said the alliance is working on a number of policy issues, marketing and communications initiatives.

Yablonsky said the group wants to develop a comprehensive policy addressing the rapid emergence of the exploration and development of the Marcellus Shale strata.

"If we do it in a way that helps developers, but also in a way that addresses the environmental concerns, this thing will explode," he said.