Global demand for clean technologies, data centers, and advanced manufacturing is surging, and the United States is entering an “electro-industrial” era where energy, manufacturing, and computing power are one growth engine. A recent wave of federal industrial policy has unlocked record construction of factories, grids, and supply chains, but the gains are uneven and increasingly exposed to changing policy priorities.

These shifts can be characterized under three pivots:

1. The technology pivot — toward the electro-industrial era
2. The geography pivot — where private investment is concentrated in a few areas, leaving others behind
3. The policy pivot — from federal incentives to investment-led approaches at the state level

Some states are converting this moment into durable industrial projects, while many others still face overloaded grids, slow permitting, and thin project pipelines. Governors and economic development leaders need a state-driven, investment-led strategy that can move projects from announcements to operating assets.

This new report, GREASE Lightning: A playbook for investment-led, state-driven electro-industrial economies, offers that strategy. It distills lessons from recent federal policy and state experience and provides an operating system for states to execute on their strategies to build electro-industrial economies. This operating system is called the “GREASE” framework and has six key components: Governance, regional targeting, expansive ambition, accountability, sector strategies, and environmental co-benefits. See our factsheet to learn more about GREASE.

This report shows how to stand up empowered teams, target investment toward regions with the right capabilities and grid conditions, embed performance and equity into incentives, and design sector-specific policy stacks for factories, grid equipment, and computing power.

The strategy is clear: build institutions that can deliver projects at speed, modernize incentives around real-world outcomes, and use public tools to crowd in private capital rather than chase it. GREASE Lightning gives state leaders a practical path to lower costs for households and businesses, secure new manufacturing and data-center hubs, and ensure that the electro-industrial transition delivers good jobs, cleaner power, and more resilient communities across the country.

Acknowledgements:The authors would like to thank the 20-plus state officials, researchers, and private companies who participated in interviews that influenced this report. Their insights were invaluable in shaping this work.