We're attracting the world's largest cleantech firms

The world is taking notice. The largest international cleantech companies are focusing their North American growth in Colorado—where they can access abundant natural and human resources—and the means to reach their markets.

Vestas chooses Colorado for its North American expansion

Vestas, the world's leading manufacturer of wind turbines and largest cleantech employer, has invested more than $1 billion at four manufacturing plants (its first in North America) in Colorado. Total employment in the state will reach 2,500 workers.

• Opened its first Colorado plant in 2008. The $62 million, 400,000-square-foot facility in Windsor will produce 1,200 wind-turbine blades a year, eventually providing 650 manufacturing jobs.
• Broke ground in 2009 on two manufacturing plants in Brighton for blades and nacelles. With a $290-million investment, Vestas will employ 1,350 people at the facilities. In 2010, Vestas announced a service and maintenance center will be established adjacent to facilities.
• Vestas opened a $250-million tower factory in Pueblo with 550 employees.
• Vestas Technology R&D Americas, Inc. leased space in the Colorado Technology Center in Louisville in July 2010 for a new engineering and product development division. The company will employ 75 to 125 new employees at the site in the first year of operation. The division will work to improve technology for existing turbines and develop the wind power systems of the future.
• Learn more: Vestas Makes Colorado a Clean-Energy Hub – The New York Times

SMA Solar Technology locates its first plant outside of Germany in Colorado

SMA Solar Technology, the world leader for photovoltaic inverters, announced in 2009 that it would open its first manufacturing facility outside of Germany in Denver. The Colorado facility, which opened in the summer of 2010, is the largest solar-inverter production facility in the U.S. and will optimize the supply of inverters to the growing North American solar market.

• SMA company officials say the Denver plant will help SMA reduce transportation and interim storage costs as well as currency exchange risks.
• Yearly production capacity of the new facility will be approximately one gigawatt, with an option for expansion.
• Production at SMA’s Colorado plant began in the summer of 2010 with 300 employees (with capacity to expand to 700).
• SMA leased a second facility in the Enterprise Park at Stapleton, signing a 10-year lease for a 148,902-square-foot building in April 2011.
• Learn more: SMA to Open Gigawatt-Scale Production Facility – Renewable Energy World

ConocoPhillips places its Global Technology and Training Center in Colorado

ConocoPhillips announced in 2008 that it will establish a new Global Technology and Corporate Learning Center at the former Storage Technology campus in Louisville. The new 432-acre campus, purchased for $55.6 million, will be operational by 2013 and could eventually employ as many as 7,000 workers. The company will raze and rebuild the campus to make way for a global technology center that will be the hub for its research and development in making liquid fuels from renewable sources.

• Company officials say they selected Colorado because of the intellectual resources available in the state, including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, University of Colorado, Colorado State University, and the Colorado School of Mines.
• The company will also create a worldwide learning center at the site where it will bring thousands of employees each year to train on new energy technology applications.
• ConocoPhillips signed a $5-million, multiyear, sponsored research agreement with the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels, a research center of the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory, to develop new ways to convert biomass into low-carbon transportation fuels.
• Learn more: ConocoPhillips unveils plans for Louisville campus – Denver Business Journal

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