Southern Indiana's reputation as a big force in the manufacturing sector will be getting some more notice soon during a study of how the area's economic resources can contribute to growing the energy sector of the economy.

"Growing a Regional Energy Employment Network" is an initiative to gather information on all of the southern Indiana businesses that could be retooled to be players in a transforming energy industry and create an "Energy Business Cluster."

The idea is to use the abilities of businesses to create new jobs in energy, especially renewable energy. "It's all about jobs and increasing the average earnings," said Joshua Pack, senior operational analyst with Vectren Energy at a presentation on the initiative Thursday held in the Indiana Center for Applied Technologies at Vincennes University.

"The region is a center for coal, we know it's an existing base for energy production and we want to move into the next generation of technology, specifically, manufacturing," Pack said. "New technologies will require manufacturing."

Pack displayed a diagram of a wind turbine to demonstrate the different components that could become products of the area's manufacturing companies. "We might already be poised to enter that market," he said. Pack said that taken as a whole, the southwestern region has an ample amount of businesses that could easily be turned around to operate in the energy sector, a part of the economy that he said was very likely to see good growth for the next several decades, despite the state of the economy today. The G.R.E.E.N project is funded by a $5.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor as part of its WIRED initiative, which seeks to transform local economies based on the strengths discovered through studies like the one being conducted in southwest Indiana.

Christine Prior , planning manager with Grow Southwest Indiana Workforce, which charters the Evansville and Vincennes WorkOne branches, emphasized that the project will take a regional approach and not favor one county over another.

"This is not just Knox County or Vanderburgh County or any one that will suck us dry," she said. "I've seen from what we're doing that this is truly a regional approach."

Mayor Al Baldwin also briefly addressed the small number of attendees to explain that he sees the city as being ready to contribute its workforce to the endeavor of promoting an increase in energy sector jobs.

"I can speak to the philosophy of southwest Indiana," he said. "The overall theme is that we continue to survive, and the important thing to remember is that America is great, but we made a big mistake sending jobs overseas and we won't recover completely until we bring those jobs back. I liken us to the '49ers. They put everything on their back and got on a train."

VU President Dick Helton also took a moment to express his optimism about how the university can contribute to developing a workforce for a transitioning area economy. "(The ICAT) facility is all about training for new technology," he said. "We're connected very well in this part of the state on the training side and the manufacturing side."