Playbook Shows How America Can Regain Leadership in the Global Energy Economy

Despite a booming global energy market, the U.S. is ceding its economic and technical leadership to other nations. A new report provides a detailed playbook on how to resume its competitive position.
Nov. 6, 2025
2 min read

What you'll learn:

  • A report from the Rocky Mountain Institute warns that the United States and its energy companies are losing market share to China and other state-backed investors abroad.
  • A data-driven strategy targets strategic advanced energy industries and global partnerships to strengthen energy supply chains and boost American competitiveness.
  • The three-part playbook leverages America’s energy strengths and technical innovation into bankable projects.

Even though global energy demand is surging, particularly in next-generation technologies, the United States and its energy companies are losing market share. Analysis conducted by the Rocky Mountain institute (RMI) indicates this is largely because America’s overseas financing agencies today are ill-equipped to compete with China and other state-backed investors abroad.

RMI’s recent study suggests that United States needs a balanced, data-driven strategy that targets advanced energy industries and global partnerships to strengthen energy supply chains, boost American competitiveness, and support global growth and stability.

In its report “Secure, Competitive, Global: The playbook for United States energy statecraft in a new technological era,” RMI offers a new playbook that entails a three-part framework: Balance, benchmark, and build to convert America’s energy strengths into geopolitical influence and commercial advantage.

First, strike a balance between energy security, economic opportunity, and environmental sustainability in energy statecraft so that outdated political ideologies and uneven capital flows don’t undermine strategic goals. Next, benchmark sectors and partners through technology-neutral, data-driven reviews to target the right industries and structure durable partnerships.

Finally, build execution capacity through master energy agreements with partners, empowered deal coordinators, and a coordinated toolkit across U.S. government trade and development agencies, so that U.S. innovation translates into bankable projects and lasting influence.

About the Author

Lee Goldberg

Contributing Editor

Lee Goldberg is a self-identified “Recovering Engineer,” Maker/Hacker, Green-Tech Maven, Aviator, Gadfly, and Geek Dad. He spent the first 18 years of his career helping design microprocessors, embedded systems, renewable energy applications, and the occasional interplanetary spacecraft. After trading his ‘scope and soldering iron for a keyboard and a second career as a tech journalist, he’s spent the next two decades at several print and online engineering publications.

Lee’s current focus is power electronics, especially the technologies involved with energy efficiency, energy management, and renewable energy. This dovetails with his coverage of sustainable technologies and various environmental and social issues within the engineering community that he began in 1996. Lee also covers 3D printers, open-source hardware, and other Maker/Hacker technologies.

Lee holds a BSEE in Electrical Engineering from Thomas Edison College, and participated in a colloquium on technology, society, and the environment at Goddard College’s Institute for Social Ecology. His book, “Green Electronics/Green Bottom Line - A Commonsense Guide To Environmentally Responsible Engineering and Management,” was published by Newnes Press.

Lee, his wife Catherine, and his daughter Anwyn currently reside in the outskirts of Princeton N.J., where they masquerade as a typical suburban family.

Lee also writes the regular PowerBites series

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