As the Chair of the Ignite Clean Energy Competition (www.ignitecleanenergy.com), over the last 2 months I’ve had the opportunity to travel up and down the East Coast to Raleigh-Durham, NC/Research Triangle Park, Boston, New York City, Upstate New York (Ithaca & Rochester for Cornell and RIT), New Haven (Yale), Washington, DC, and Hanover, NH (Dartmouth), and Silicon Valley/the Bay area, not to mention several locally here in Boston (Harvard, the Clean Energy Conference, etc.)

It has been a wonderful opportunity to see whether the excitement about the renewable energy sector is as fervent in other geographies as it is here in Boston.  I’m pleased to report that in short, the answer is yes.  Students, professionals, scientists, technologists are all thinking about how they can contribute, in what ways can they lever their skills and experience to help solve the world’s energy problems.    Down in RTP, North Carolina, there were more than 130 in attendance with standing room only for a panel around renewable energy, and the ICE competition (http://www.cednc.org/event/38).   In each location we participated, there was passion & interest around fostering innovation in the cleantech sector.   One of the most popular questions that consistently comes up surrounds the uncertainty of exactly how to define the sector.  As we also have a cleantech practice area here at BSG Team Ventures, one of the better industry segmentations we’ve seen comes courtesy of www.greentechmedia.com.  For all those visual learners like me, thought it might be worth republishing here:

Genus-species in the cleantech sector

ICE is headed to the UK / England for yet another kick off event March 3rd at Oxford University.  And for anyone who wants to get involved as a mentor, contestant, volunteer, or potential judge, go to http://younoodle.com/groups/ignite_clean_energy_ice and join the group of sustainable energy innovators.    To get further educated and excited, visit our home page at www.bostonsearchgroup.com and click the “video tab” in the lower righthand corner for a 90-second Highlights video of last year’s ICE Finals event that took place in May, 2008, with winner FloDesign (www.flodesign.org).