Like a scrappy startup making it past its first hurdles, the Peach State’s fast-growing clean tech industry is beginning to take form and add thousands of Georgians to its ranks.
More than 82,000 Georgians worked in the clean tech industry at the end of 2024, according to a new report by the Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy. That’s more than double the number of Georgia-based workers at Atlanta’s largest private employer, Delta Air Lines, and it’s a figure poised to balloon in the next few years as more clean tech projects come online.
The report was touted by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce this week, and its leadership sees the figure as validation of state leaders’ efforts to court the industry. Chris Clark, president and CEO of the Georgia Chamber, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that clean tech may be an emerging sector, but it’s one with long-term ambitions.
“The companies that are investing in Georgia, they’re making a 50- to 100-year investment,” Clark said. “These are long-term relationships.”
Clean tech includes any business innovating in technologies that aim to reduce climate change or carbon emissions. The energy efficient appliance industry accounts for the largest share of current Georgia employment with 58,067 jobs, according to the report that used data from nonpartisan group E2. It’s followed by renewable energy generation (11,162 jobs), electric vehicles (7,821) and energy storage and power grids (4,593).
“The clean energy sector is growing at twice the rate of the overall economy,” said Ryan Evans, executive director for the Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy. “And Georgia is a leader in harnessing the economic benefits of that growth.”
Credit: Steve Schaefer /
Credit: Steve Schaefer /
Beyond the tens of thousands who already work in clean tech, there’s likely more to come.
The bulk of Georgia’s forthcoming clean tech investment centers on EV manufacturing and supply chains. Many of those announcements came during the Biden administration, which supported EV makers and renewable energy projects with broad subsidies, incentives and tax credits. Many of those programs are now at risk of being rolled back under the Trump administration, which has decried what it calls the “EV mandate.”
On the day President Donald Trump began his second term, he promised to roll back carbon emission regulations aiming to incentivize domestic EV production, and he detailed policy changes he wants to push through Congress, such as paring back $7,500 tax credits for buyers of plug-in cars. Trump and his allies argue the Democratic-backed federal policies threaten gasoline vehicles and repealing the federal programs will create a “level regulatory playing field.”
The federal policy whiplash has thrown multiple projects’ futures into question, including some in Georgia. Clark said he doesn’t expect those promised — but so far undelivered — investments in Georgia to be derailed solely by changes in the White House.
“I don’t view them as at risk,” he said. “Our position has been, from the Biden administration to today, is to let the market dictate it and let consumer demand drive what we want to drive.”
Risk and benefits
Recruiting new industries is always a risk, but it’s one that comes with the potential reward of being at ground zero for a new economic linchpin.
Gov. Brian Kemp five years ago set out to make Georgia the “e-mobility capital of the world.” In the years since, the state has attracted multibillion-dollar EV manufacturing plants, battery factories and many projects across their supply chains.
The largest of those projects, Hyundai Motor Group’s $7.6 billion “Metaplant” in Bryan County, began pumping out EVs in October. The automaker said it will eventually employ 8,500 workers, but only a fraction of those employees have been hired so far.
Credit: Courtesy Hyundai Motor Group
Credit: Courtesy Hyundai Motor Group
Clark said it’s forward-looking policy to try to foster the careers of tomorrow, which involves training a workforce to meet those new demands.
“It’s inherent to having a dynamic economic environment,” he said. “It’s really different today than it was 20 years ago in Georgia when I think we were more of a two- or three-sided economy. It’s (now) robust and we can afford to take risk and get the benefits from it.”
Georgia ranked 15th in the nation for clean tech jobs, the report found. The industry supports about 3.5 million workers in the U.S., meaning Georgia comprises about 2.3% of the emerging sector’s workforce.
But many of Georgia’s clean tech projects have yet to come online. The largest pending project is a $5 billion factory by EV startup Rivian that’s promised to come to southern Morgan and Walton counties. The project has been beset by delays, and a $6.6 billion federal loan that was approved in the waning weeks of the Biden administration has come under fire by prominent Republicans. Rivian officials maintain they will begin to build the Georgia factory in 2026.
Rivian has promised to meet its goal of 7,500 jobs and its financial investment by 2030.
Credit: Steve Schaefer /
Credit: Steve Schaefer /
Another large project promised for Georgia, a $2.6 billion battery factory by startup Freyr, was abandoned earlier this year. Aspen Aerogels, a company that makes special materials to contain EV fires, also ceased construction of its partially built Georgia factory this year. The two projects promised nearly 975 jobs in total.
Clark said not every investment will pay off, but he said the chamber’s “Georgia 2050″ initiative anticipates clean tech to continue to grow.
“If you want to grow the economy, there’s risk involved,” he said. “ … Part of our strategic plan of Georgia 2050 is to make sure that we’ve got the regulatory environment that allows any type of company, any type of entrepreneur to try things out. Some of those are going to fail. That’s business nature.”
Cox Enterprises, the owner of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, also owns a 3% stake in Rivian.
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