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Following the Clean Energy Council Fellows
MHT's Efrain Viscarolasaga: Tech companies may have to wait for stimulus funds
MHT reporter Efrain Viscarolasaga on NECN: Green tech brings jobs back to Mass.
Cleantech leaders in Central Massachusetts are looking toward their biotech brethren in Worcester as a model for bringing more industry development to the region.
Armed with a grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, the Institute for Energy and Sustainability is working to bring together cleantech players from the public, business and academic sectors to pitch the Worcester area as a good place to build and grow a green business.
“With the stimulus programs, the clean energy sector is one of the few sectors performing according to plan,” said Vincent DeVito, a cleantech attorney with Bowditch & Dewey LLP and interim director of the institute.
“There is already a green energy cluster group in Central Mass. ... and we thought, ‘How can we leverage the respective entrepreneurial skills, mission, vision and access to the marketplace to attract more like businesses to the area?’”
While discussions about green economic development between business and academia have ruminated for months, the initiative was formally launched just a few weeks ago with a $150,000 grant from the state clean energy center for startup operations.
DeVito’s group already has strong support from the two major technology universities in the area, Clark University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, as well as U.S. Rep. James McGovern, who represents much of the area in Congress.
WPI is well known for its research in fuel cells, with a lab targeted for state funding in the Green Jobs Act of 2008, and Clark’s expertise in the physical sciences has produced several clean energy patents.
At first, DeVito said the group will be focused on establishing roundtables with business leaders, academics and public officials to “cinch up the patchwork of efforts” going on in the area. He plans to facilitate discussions with federal energy officials in Washington, D.C. — he was a former assistant secretary of energy for policy and international affairs — as well as run road shows and investor conferences to pitch the area and its businesses.
Ultimately the institute would like to build an incubator in the Worcester area to help commercialize technology coming out of the universities, as well as new business ventures from entrepreneurs locally and globally. But building an industry incubator is no small task, even with public support — just ask another group that has done it in Worcester.
“In two words, it’s very hard — you’ve got to step back a bit and get all of the stakeholders together,” said Kevin O’Sullivan, executive director of the Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives. O’Sullivan said he has spoken with DeVito about the institue’s plans and thinks they are on the right track.
“I told Vince, ‘Before you start going out looking for space, you have to think about how you get funding that’s sustainable.’ The mode that you start in is as a virtual incubator... but Clark and WPI give him a giant step ahead,” he said.
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