Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Planned Fraunhofer center in South Boston is expected to drive cleantech initiatives

By Rodney H. Brown

In one year, South Boston will be the hub of clean energy technology and business development, if Nolan Browne of the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems has anything to say about it.

That will be when Cambridge-based Fraunhofer CSE moves into the building at 5 Channel Center, opening a new headquarters for the center, the TechBridge clean technology commercialization program and the planned Building Technology Showcase — a facility that will show off new energy efficiency technology for use in new or retrofitted buildings, and to help test those technologies to prove that they work while offering a return on investment.

Fraunhofer CSE proper will house three main lab groups — a set of scientists working on components for photovoltaic modules, another working on building energy efficiency tech and what Browne describes as right now a “half group,” focused on smart grid technologies. All three elements of Fraunhofer CSE’s new home — the labs, the showcase and TechBridge — are intended to work together, Browne said.

“TechBridge can benefit us by getting us projects in the lab,” he said. In fact, the companies that are chosen to get a grant from TechBridge will have access to scientists to help them develop their technology to the point of being commercially ready to attract outside capital. In addition, some of those technologies, if they are related to building energy efficiency, might also wind up in the showcase, subject to experiments to prove their real-world effectiveness and value.

As a nonprofit, Fraunhofer CSE is taking pains to ensure that it has no stake the companies in TechBridge, so there can be no sense of bias when they evaluate resulting tech that may land in the showcase. The money that TechBridge gives out is in the form of a grant, and is completely non-dilutive, Browne said. Therefore it carries no influence in the evaluations that he plans as a primary function of the showcase. If the tech doesn’t work as intended, Fraunhofer will call it out as such.

The TechBridge program is designed to give a cleantech startup three to six months of access to Fraunhofer’s expertise and R&D assets. Browne said the number of companies that will be involved in TechBridge depends on financing. “Theoretically there’s no limit to the number of companies we could help but, practically, from a financial standpoint there is,” he said. TechBridge isn’t an incubator, however, and the companies in the program won’t be located in 5 Channel Center. That’s why Fraunhofer CSE has partners, Browne said.

“When we have a company that does work with us, inherently we try to think of where we can put them,” he said. “We have partners like North Shore Innoventures — these are guys that provide incubation facilities. We have an energy incubator in Lynn and a biotech incubator in Beverly and there will be something in Cambridge — it isn’t set up yet but hopefully we will have some physical space that is strongly tied into the TechBridge program.”

TechBridge is a joint clean technology commercialization program with the New England Clean Energy Council, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and the Association of Cleantech Incubators of New England. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Fraunhofer CSE a $1 million grant in September 2010 to help finance the accelerator program called U-Launch, which is managed by the TechBridge group.

Fraunhofer CSE itself was launched in 2008 as a joint project between the MIT Energy Initiative, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and the German R&D organization Fraunhofer Institute. Fraunhofer CSE is financed by the Clean Energy Center, National Grid and anonymous private donors in the U.S., as well as the German federal government and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.

Browne is particularly excited about the potential of the showcase, hoping it will become something akin to the Consumer Reports of building energy efficiency technology, and move beyond the LEED certification program, which is the end point of green building efforts at this stage, he said.

“The LEED program has done a good job of showing people what can be done,” Browne said. “What we want to do is show the analysis of it — here’s the hard data to back that up.”

At occupation in June, the 5 Channel Center building will house about 60 Fraunhofer staffers, including showcase and TechBridge staff, Browne said, but there is room for growth. “Ultimately we are going to have the lab capabilities and space to go up to at least 100 people,” he said.