PLUG IN to the Global Economy

How does technology impact international trade? Our colleagues at this year’s World Trade Day give companies the chance to ask just that and to discover how recent innovations in technology can facilitate their operations and bolster their bottom line. From supply-chain management to social media marketing and team collaboration, there’s a multitude of new technology tools that allow businesses to do more across the globe than ever before. Through World Trade Day, the Rocky Mountain World Trade Center Institute and its partners aim to put these tools and services into the hands of those who will find them most useful.

Come network with nearly 500 international business professionals at the 40^th Annual World Trade Day on Thursday, May 16^th, 2013. This year’s theme, “Plug into the Global Economy – How Technology Impacts Trade,” highlights the value of technology tools for international trade and business. By attending World Trade Day, you’ll be in the same room as some of the world’s most innovative technological tools and the professionals that design and distribute them. In addition to listening to notable tech-savvy speakers, including the Chief Information Officer of Visa, Michael Dreyer, and the Chief Information Officer of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, Yuri Aguiar, you will have the opportunity to engage in the daylong techXpo, where companies will demonstrate their tools for your learning and benefit.

We can guarantee that World Trade Day 2013 will make you rethink the role of technology in your business. Click here for more information and registration. 

CCIA Dispatches from DC

Last week I fled the snowstorms of Colorado for the spring cherry blossoms in Washington DC to lobby Congress on energy tax reform as part of the Advanced Energy Economy’s (AEE) first regional chapter fly-in.  Companies and clean energy organizations from all over the country converged in DC to talk to House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committee Members of Congress and senior staff.  We had companies and associations from North Carolina, Arkansas, Boston, Michigan, California, Maryland, Minnesota and more.  Ed Williams, the CEO of Novinda, was the industry advocate rounding out CCIA’s team.

Despite the historic gridlock in Congress there is a real bipartisan push to reform the tax code.  One message nobody disagreed with is that our current tax policy is broken and because we don’t have a national energy policy, energy tax policy is the driving force for cleantech.  

The overall theme of our message was promoting a smarter tax policy - one that is technology neutral, outcomes based and sunsets when a particular goal is met.  Unfortunately, the various tax policies benefitting cleantech are composed of one, two and five year sunsets and reauthorizations that combine to create artificial cliffs prohibiting planning and investment.  We need to look no further than the recent brinksmanship and damage done by the recent one-year extension of the wind PTC.  Instead of a one-year extension of the wind PTC, Congress needs to set a goal - like 5% of our baseload electrical energy from wind or X amount of gigawatts deployed, then the tax benefit sunsets.  

Another example I used was in the transportation sector.  Congress should set a goal to reduce foreign imported oil for transportation and any domestic technology (electric vehicles, natural gas vehicles, advanced engine efficiencies, biofuels, more transit etc.) that helps to accomplish the goal gets a tax incentive.   When the goal is achieved then the tax break goes away. This is especially important in the current context of many traditional energy industries getting tax breaks baked into our tax code with no sunset provisions.  The current tax system picks winners and losers and distorts markets thereby decreasing and sometimes flat-out discouraging investment in new innovative technologies.

Democratic and Republican members were impressed that a group came to DC not asking for a handout and volunteering for a sunset to a potential tax provision benefitting their industry.  This message especially resonated with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s staff and Energy Committee Ranking Member Senator Lisa Murkowski’s staff.

While this was more of a 30,000-foot discussion on energy tax policy, if tax reform bogs down again in the DC swamp then cleantech needs to be prepared to fight for specific provisions in another temporary tax extenders package.  This is of course if we can walk and chew gum at the same time.  I’m confident CCIA, AEE and its members can do just that.

Chris Votoupal

Deputy Director

CCIA

Energy Conversations from Utah's Energize 2013

As a conversation starter at the Energy Commercialization Center's Energize 2013 conference, I had the pleasure of visiting Snowbird, Utah (my first time in the Utah mountains) and participating in the first effort to connect and build the Rocky Mountain regional cleantech ecosystem.  The Energy Commercialization Center at the University of Utah was one of five 2010 DOE EERE-funded Innovation Ecosystem Development Initiatives that will accomplish such activities as pursuing intellectual property protection for technological innovations; nurturing and mentoring entrepreneurs; engaging the surrounding business and venture capital community; and integrating sustainable entrepreneurship and innovation across university schools and departments. 

During the course of the two-day event, research organizations, companies and industry trade groups from Utah, Colorado and Idaho met to share best practices and ideas for policy, access to capital, and tech transfer among other topics.  My colleagues from Colorado included Dick Franklin, Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Cleantech Open, and Steve Berens, Executive Director of the Cleantech Fellows Institute, who spoke about Rocky Mountain resources for clean technology innovation and entrepreneurship. 

My session concerned best practices in cleantech policy and how policy can successfully drive job creation.  While the surrounding states are not yet as organized as Colorado, there's a lot we can do together to facilitate the cooperation to grow our clean technology industries.  One of the best parts of the program was meeting new partners like RenewableTech Ventures and Navillum Nanotechnologies that I can plug into Colorado's clean tech universe.  I look forward to future collaboration with Utah's Energy Commercialization Center and the ongoing energy conversation.

Cleantech Fellows Institute Opens Applications for Executives and Entrepreneurs to Bridge Their Talent and Skills into Cleantech

Cleantech Fellows Institute encourages new venture formation, job creation and growth of the cleantech industry

As “Cleantech 2.0” blossoms from the lessons learned over the past decade, smart entrepreneurs and corporate executives are looking to leverage the lessons of the past and launch themselves to success in cleantech. The Cleantech Fellows Instituteaddresses a simple but compelling problem: more seasoned executives are needed everyday to bridge cleantech opportunities to a hungry global market. The objective of the Institute is to help experienced entrepreneurs and executives accelerate their transition into the cleantech sector, stimulating new venture formation, job creation and growth of the cleantech industry.

The Cleantech Fellows Institute is the premiere executive talent bridge and is accepting applicationsnow through July 12, 2013. The program will run from mid-August to mid-December and combines seminars, guest speakers, lab visits, company tours and a capstone project. The rolling admissions process will provide prompt feedback to applicants from the entrepreneurial and corporate community.

“Executives with proven business building experience, a creative drive, and leadship abilities are encouraged to apply," commented Steven Berens, Cleantech Fellows Institute, executive director. “Each candidate must have a strong desire to transition into the cleantech industry through accelerated immersison, networking and technology exposure. Targeted executives include those who have built successful ventures in sectors such as aerospace, biotechnology, information, energy and enterprise technology.”

“I would recommend the Cleantech Fellows Institute to anyone interested in the industry and who wants to make a difference,” said John Tuttle, 2012 Cleantech Fellow. “The Institute team delivered an incredible program that tied together a deep curriculum, an impressive network of cleantech experts and a highly-valuable capstone project. The intensity of the program, combined with the dedicated network of experts, truly created an atmosphere of community. When I finished the program, I really felt that I had built a network that would help me grow my business.”

Colorado Cleantech Industry Association’s Cleantech Fellows Institute

The Cleantech Situation

ICOSA Magazine

by: Eric Drummond

Many of us in the industry have seen the headlines in the print media and have watched the “experts” on the cable news shows discussing the early demise of cleantech—newspaper articles and TV documentaries recently claiming that cleantech is dead, that the cleantech bubble has burst.  But if we look beyond the provocative headlines, we’ll see that the industry is not dead or dying; it’s growing, and in some sectors maturing, but doing so without effective and rational policy support and during a time of financial difficulty.  And because it’s hard, investors, entrepreneurs, regulators and other industry players are still figuring out the most efficient manner in which to bring new technologies to market.

The facts, on the other hand, appear to reflect a far different story:

• U.S. venture capital investment in cleantech companies reached $4.9 billion in 2011, according to an Ernst & Young LLP analysis based on data from Dow Jones VentureSource.  This is flat in terms of deals compared to 2012 but represents a 29 percent increase from the $3.8 billion raised in 2009.
• Nationally, renewable electricity generation doubled from 2006 to 2011, and prices for wind, solar and other clean energy technologies decreased.
• Employment in cleantech industry sectors expanded by almost 12 percent from 2007 to 2010.
• Locally, the Denver, Colo., nine-county region ranked sixth out of the 50 largest metro areas in the United States in cleantech employment concentration in 2011, with around 1,500 cleantech companies operating in the nine-county region in 2011.
• Colorado had investments of $363.3 million throughout 2011, a 28 percent increase from 2010, making it the state with the third highest level of investments.

Recognized as one of the most innovation-intensive states, Colorado derives this honor from the strength of the research, investor and entrepreneurship communities built around the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, Colorado School of Mines and the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).  Another data point, in the past five years, more than 450 provisional, nonprovisional and international clean technology patents have been filed by researchers at these schools.
Others have pointed out that Colorado has enormous local resources, and with NREL in our midst we have an incredibly strong link to the national cleantech ecosystem.  NREL is the leader in research in solar, wind, biomass and other clean technologies.  Indeed, known in the research and development community as “the Oscars of Innovation,” NREL has won 50 R&D 100 Awards in the last 30 years.
In addition to NREL, Colorado is also home to a number of other federal labs, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the state is also home to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).  This feature set of national labs and research centers, as well as universities, and investor and innovator communities, all reflect on the rich diversity of the Colorado cleantech ecosystem.

A Cleantech Solution
What many of us have come to understand is that most venture capital firms are quick to acknowledge that they invest in teams and people, not just products and technologies.  With that in mind, an enterprising and energetic group of people banded together to create a platform, the Cleantech Fellows Institute, to accelerate the development of cleantech in the region and across the nation.

Robert Welch: Thoughts on the Cleantech Fellows Institute

Robert Welch is one of the Cleantech Fellows Institute’s invaluable Department Heads, co-leading the Technology Transfer curriculum. We asked Robert to share his thoughts about the program.

You have extensive experience in energy efficiency, would you say you have had any “ah-ha” moments in your career?

The low price of energy in the US allowed quite a few wasteful practices to become commonplace.  When I noticed every building on a single campus was operating with their heating and cooling systems running simultaneously, I started to realize how widespread the opportunities had become.  When I discovered almost every data center is operating 20 degrees colder than required by the computer equipment suppliers, I began to understand huge opportunities were present in virtually every industry.

How did you get into cleantech?

My career started with providing control systems for coal fired utility power plants.  That led me to control systems for renewable energy systems including solar, biomass, and hydro.

Debra Wilcox: Thoughts on the Cleantech Fellows Institute

Debra Wilcox is our Advanced Transportation Department Head for the Fellows Institute. We asked Debra to share her thoughts about the program.

You were one of the integral members of the Cleantech Fellows Institute’s team of Department Heads during the inaugural session in 2012.  Looking back on the experience, what were a couple of program highlights for you?

At the time I was asked to be a member of the CFI team, I had an idea of what I thought the program would be.  My vision was far exceeded by both the participants and the content of the program.  The value of the program showed itself in the level of participation from the fellows, the staff and the many guests speakers attracted to the program. The program was about learning, not teaching and each session presented learning opportunities for fellows and presenters alike.

Your background in law, aviation, aerospace and energy is quite impressive.  What most excites you about the intersection of cleantech and aviation?

I am a strong proponent of bringing industry sectors together. Through those intersections participants learn from each other and those intereactions spark more innovation.  I believe that the Cleantech Fellows Institute has created an innovative culture, not unlike that described by the Edison Achievement Award in describing the work of David Kelley, CEO of IDEO, that is the “development of an innovative culture that has broad impact.” This innovative culture will continue to be the success of the program.