Key Agenda Items
- TECC summit highlights
- Near-term tactical focus
- Discussion: guidance on geothermal, wind, energy storage, and data centers as we begin initial market studies
Key Takeaways
- Data center developments
- SCTCA member Tribes have received proposals for data center developments, but the understanding is that opportunities are not well understood.
- A fact sheet and preliminary market study would be valuable and time sensitive for multiple member Tribes.
- Commercial clean energy opportunities
- There is general interest in utility-scale geothermal, energy storage and wind energy projects
- The innovation ecosystem team will begin preliminary market studies on the opportunities in parallel to building out high-level feasibility studies across member Tribes.
- Manufacturing’s economic and workforce development (EWD) opportunities
- Manufacturing is traditionally viewed as providing high economic and workforce development value to local communities.
- Sovereign Tribal Nations have the unique ability to create free trade zones that could enable imported inputs to bypass U.S. duties while still satisfying U.S. national security interests related to domestic production of certain critical goods.
- Electronics manufacturing was mentioned as potential target industry as inputs are high value relative to their weight and can be flown in directly to Tribal free trade zone.
- The innovation ecosystem team is interested in better understanding the broader EWD value in manufacturing and exploring potential opportunities for member Tribes.
- Workforce development
- Training for computer-aided design (CAD) can open careers in product design and machining.
- LACI is piloting a training course in Q4’26
- Developing an overview of CAD and potential career development would help Tribal councils understand the opportunity.
Action Items
- LACI: Share any relevant contacts that might support TECC’s preliminary market studies across data centers, geothermal, energy storage, and wind — done
Previous Action Items
- Dr. Ramon Sanchez from ATCE to send resource on Boston Innovation Ecosystem co-working space design.
- Develop a lightweight tribal readiness / site feasibility questionnaire and decide on confidentiality protocol for Tribal infrastructure and site information.
- Follow up with Will to confirm and accurately capture legal, tax, jurisdictional, and governance points.
- Follow up with Byron on lab-to-market pilot processes and internal safety review practices.
- Review and determine path forward on legislative education on TECC and Innovation Ecosystem programming. Reach out to Advisory Board members to see if there is any interest in collaborating.
- Develop educational material on Tribal engagement, capabilities, and constraints for both advisory board and prospective companies. Utilize material from ATCE.
- Explore what educational material and outreach is needed for SCTCA Tribal governments and communities.
- Develop understanding of regulatory constraints and advantages related to a technology pilot deployment on Tribal lands.