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Friday, August 7, 2009
How I See It
U.K. clean tech could bring opportunity
Following the Clean Energy Council Fellows
MHT's Efrain Viscarolasaga: Preparing the smart grid for more power
MHT reporter Efrain Viscarolasaga on NECN: Green tech brings jobs back to Mass.
In mid-July, I was asked by U.K. Trade & Investment to join a clean energy trade mission touring England and Wales. During the weeklong program, we met with a variety of organizations and companies, including the Carbon Trust, the Crown Estate, SolarCentury, the Building Research Establishment, the Bath Ventures Innovation Centre and several others. I came away from the trip with some specific impressions about clean tech in the United Kingdom and thought I’d share a few of them here.
Perhaps the first and most vivid observation is that the U.K.’s official commitment to clean tech is strong and growing. While the U.S. is still in the process of mustering the political will necessary to set binding national targets, the U.K. appears to have fully acknowledged the urgency of the fight that looms ahead. In its official Renewable Energy Strategy, released on the Wednesday of our weeklong tour, the U.K. set a target of 15 percent of energy from renewables by 2020 (That’s total energy — renewable electricity will likely be in the range of 30 percent. Compare that to the Waxman-Markey target of 20 percent by 2020). The U.K. plan includes 33 gigawatts of offshore wind, the development of new tidal technologies, and aggressive goals for decarbonizing transportation.
All of this is driven by a substantial commitment of government dollars — an approach that many Americans might find heavy-handed (although it’s an approach with which we are becoming increasingly familiar). The Carbon Trust, the Crown Estate and many other nonprofits will play a substantial role in seeding clean tech companies and driving clean energy initiatives — and virtually all of their funding is directly from taxpayers.
Herein lies a substantial opportunity for New England companies. European markets make great logistical sense for any established clean tech venture in this region considering expansion outside the U.S.; the proximity alone gives us a sizable advantage over our West Coast competition. But the willingness of European governments to facilitate the process can make it a truly compelling proposition.
This is certainly true with the U.K.: A network of regional economic development organizations are all focused on connecting companies to key partners, government officials — and customers. U.K. Trade & Investment, an organization with a well-established reputation in the Boston area, is chartered with opening doors, making key connections relevant to a company’s specific markets, even advising on cultural and business issues to lessen the mistakes many companies might otherwise make on their own. The benefit of having a “seeing-eye dog” of this caliber is invaluable.
Our tour in mid-July was a good example. The trip, comprising five days of back-to-back meetings, would have taken me (or an assistant) several days to set up — that is assuming, of course, that I knew who to call and how to get their attention. If I were the CEO of an emerging clean tech startup, I would have saved enormous amount of time and money by leveraging such resources.
While bringing New England businesses across the pond is a good opportunity for the U.K., it is also a tremendous opportunity for this region as well: It allows our companies to expand using fewer resources and less capital, which enables our regional cluster to grow more quickly and efficiently.
All in all, a win-win for those on both sides of the Atlantic.
Nick d’Arbeloff is president of the New England Clean Energy Council.
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