The Top 100 US Infrastructure Projects Announced
North American Strategic Infrastructure Leadership Forum
Imagination, Competitiveness & Opportunity - North America 2025!
Washington, DC - May 12, 2009
– CG/LA Infrastructure LLC, the world leader in infrastructure project
identification and development, announced today the release of the Top
100 US Strategic Infrastructure Projects. The total estimated value of
the projects is nearly $465 billion, the investments for which will be spread
over an average of five years. Total direct and indirect job creation over
the period will be nearly 10 million full-time employment positions. The
Top 100 list is released prior to CG/LA’s North
American Strategic Infrastructure Leadership Forum, which will be held
September 22-24, 2009 in Washington DC.
“These projects will form the
backbone for a new, competitive, US economy and breathe life into the Obama
government’s vision going forward,” according to Norman F. Anderson, President
and CEO of CG/LA. Led by both the Obama Administration’s commitment to
improving the nation’s faltering infrastructure stock and by a regional drive
towards carbon-neutral energy and productive infrastructure, the North American
Leadership Forum will host not only the top projects in the US, but also
the leading projects in Canada and Mexico. “The US economy is in trouble,
and these projects define a powerfully competitive, critical path forward,” says
Anderson.
The Top 100 projects were identified as possessing three
specific criteria: (1) strong probability of going forward in the next 12
months; (2) critical as building blocks for US competitiveness; and (3) strong
relevance to the Obama government’s ‘connect the dots’ infrastructure
priorities. Highlights are the following:
Smart
Grid: The Smart Grid is a separate
category, best understood as the operating system for the new economy; it
is what Warren Buffet calls ‘the single most important investment in the US
economy.’ Fourteen of the 100 projects are tied to the Smart Grid,
either directly or through the projects that the Grid enables, including: 6
transmission projects ($25.1 billion), lead by the Midwest’s Green Power Express
project; and 8 renewable energy projects ($15.3 billion), including wind, solar
and energy efficiency, the largest of which is T. Boone Picken’s Pampa
project.
New
Infrastructure:
This is the infrastructure meant to serve as “building blocks” – a model both in
terms of finance and physical capacity creation - for a globally competitive US
economy. These projects are largely “carbon-neutral” - electricity rather
than liquids powered - including: 6 high speed passenger rail projects ($109.4
billion, the largest spend by far on our list), lead by the San Francisco/Los
Angeles and Midwest Rail Initiative; and 18 urban mass transit projects ($44.4
billion) including Michigan’s Regional Rail Link and Northern Virginia’s Dulles
Access Corridor project. The visionary $10 billion electric freight rail
initiative would also fall into this category.
Traditional
Infrastructure: This is what we normally think of as
infrastructure; essentially, the physical structures created 50 years ago that
have allowed our economy to be competitive and have created opportunities for
Americans over the last half-century. These projects were selected based
on their ability to renew that competitiveness, including: 17 project in surface
transportation ($58.3 billion); 7 projects in ports & logistics ($5
billion); 4 projects in traditional electricity generation ($21.4 billion); 9
projects in natural gas, including pipelines, LNG terminals and exploration
($55.1 billion); and 14 projects in the ‘forgotten’ infrastructure of
water/wastewater ($19 billion).
Roughly 2 million new jobs would
be created each year from 2010 through 2014, directly and indirectly, through
the development of these 100 strategic infrastructure projects, including jobs
in:
• Smart Grid: 839,000 job
years
• New Infrastructure: 3.2 million job
years
• Traditional Infrastructure: 3.03 million job
years
The Global Network for Competitiveness &
Opportunity
CG/LA Infrastructure LLC, the world leader in strategic
infrastructure project identification and development (www.cg-la.com),
created the Leadership Forum in order to bring infrastructure projects to life,
for equipment sellers, technology firms, service providers, EPC firms and
investors, through more than 60 discrete presentations, a series of high-level
keynotes, trend-spotting panel presentations, 6 workshops, and more than 2,500+
pre-scheduled private meetings. CG/LA also manages the North American
Strategic Infrastructure Leadership Forum and the Global Infrastructure
Leadership Forum.
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