Examining recent energy industry trends
Kelly Fleming, Industry Research Partnerships' Advanced Energy and Sustainability Assistant Director, recently spoke about current trends in the energy industry and how researchers can be involved. The webinar is approximately 30 minutes.
It is a difficult time to be a researcher, especially in the climate technology space: federal funding is shrinking, federal agency partnerships are uncertain, and the policy environment is harder to plan around than it was two years ago. It can feel like an unstable foundation even for long-term research agendas.
Despite policy uncertainty, private clean energy investment hit a record $378 billion in 2025. Private clean energy money is moving, and companies increasingly need what universities produce: research that solves hard problems and derisks technologies.
Last year was a paradox for the clean energy sector. Animosity directed at the clean energy sector and international trade resulted in 87 new trade and tariff policies, IRA rollbacks that cancelled roughly 10% of announced clean tech supply chain investment, and 377 GW of new projects stuck waiting in interconnection queues. Still, the industry posted record numbers across the board—$79 billion in new clean power investment, 1.4 million jobs supported, and more than 90% of all new U.S. grid capacity coming from clean sources.
Electricity demand also increased after nearly two decades of flat growth, driven almost entirely by data centers. The grid is becoming more strained, and more dependent on the kind of technical expertise that lives in research universities to minimize risks to our power infrastructure.
Closing the gaps
CU Boulder researchers are working on grid modeling, storage materials, workforce transition, energy systems, and sustainable materials and processes—exactly the research needed at this moment. Where federal agency funding is pulling back, companies and state partners are stepping in, and they're often looking for university researchers to anchor those efforts.
CU Boulder's Industry Research Partnerships team helps researchers and industry find and execute meaningful partnerships, structure collaborations, and connect with co-funded opportunities.
Reach out to Kelly Fleming to get started: kelly.fleming-1@colorado.edu.