Ignite Clean Energy Competition Archives

As Chair of this year’s 2010 Finals, I would like to welcome you to the 6^th Annual Ignite Clean Energy Competition here at Babson College.

There are two simple messages I would like to share this year.

The first— We have reunited West Coast and East Coast cleantech competitions this year to create now the oldest and largest cleantech competition.  Ignite Clean Energy Competition is now the Northeast regional competition for the national CleanTech Open (www.cleantechopen.com ).  The CleanTech Open now has 5 regional competitions that feed regional winners to a national finals held this year out in Northern California in November.  Participating regions in addition to the Northeast include Rocky Mountain based out of Denver, North Central based out of Minneapolis, Northwest based out of Seattle, and California anchored in the Bay area.  We’re excited to be part of what is a growing organization, and we welcome all interested to participate in any of the other regions and/or spread the word to those you know share our passion for cleantech innovation at the seed stage.

The second message  is a simple “thank you.”  And that thank you is to all volunteers in ICE over the past 6 years, competitors, mentors, sponsors, and other passionate supporters who have sustained our success through the unprecedented growth of the cleantech sector.   From our first year of the competition to 2010, we have seen the New England cleantech ecosystem grow from a small yet unorganized band of passionate visionaries, to a veritable army of well-organized constituents of a new industry sector and connected ecosystem.  The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, headed by Patrick Cloney, is the latest evolution of our anchor underwiter for Ignite Clean Energy.  Across those 6 years they have made ICE possible, organizations like the New England Clean Energy Council was born and under Nick Darbeloff and now Peter Rothstein’s leadership, they have become the nucleus to no less than a dozen other cleantech-related organizations in New England from the Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition (http://www.massh2.org/ )to the Clean Economy Network (http://www.cleaneconomynetwork.org ), from New England’s own cleantech-focused angel investing group, Clean Energy Venture Group (http://www.cleanenergyvg.com ) to a website dedicated exclusively to cleantech ecosystem events CleanTech Boston (www.cleantechboston.com).

Is it a fad?  A bubble? Unlikely.  Sustainable energy solutions are a fundamental part of making the 21^st century not our last century of civilization as we know it, but rather a bridge to sustainable centuries of civilization, innovation, and evolution that lie beyond.

A weekday morning in late November.  A brownstone residence on Beacon Hill in the shadow of the State House.  A dozen of the foremost experts in technology transfer and intellectual property in the Boston innovation cluster.  And a representative from the Department of Energy.  We at BSG Team Ventures had the recent opportunity to host a salon-style meeting in a home of a friend of the firm during Clean Energy Week here in the Commonwealth (for more on Clean Energy week, see http://greenovationconference.com/conference-info/cew.html).

The purpose?  Bringing the best minds in the Boston venture, entrepreneurship and innovation community together for a brainstorming session with the Department of Energy around best practices in technology transfer out of our national laboratories.   Attending the meeting were Alan Gordon from Harvard University Technology Licensing Office, Chris Noble from MIT’s TLO, head of the Mintz Levin cleantech practice Tom Burton, Peter Rothstein from the New England Clean Energy Council, Director of the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center Abi Barrow, Director of Partners CIMIT John Collins, General Partner at Flagship Ventures Jim Matheson, and CEOs Chris Hobson and Peter Vandermeulen each running cleantech start ups with technology licensed out of several of the national labs themselves.

The challenge the current Obama Administration is taking on under Secretary of Energy Chu is how to better mine the metaphorical gold created inside the U.S. Department of Energy-funded  national laboratory network of some 15 that are spread across the country.  Some of these labs are household names–Los Alamos and  Sandia (New Mexico), and Lawrence Livermore (California).  Others are less well known-Argonne (Illinois), Brookhaven (NY), and Ames (Iowa).  Even the National Renewable energy Lab (Colorado, known more often as NREL), are not as well known as one would hope.  The history of these national labs springs from energy research spurred by World War II.  What the layperson may remember is that many of these labs were where secretive nuclear energy research was conducted.  However, much of the mandate for these labs some 60 years later is focused on discoveries that will broadly contribute to advancing the United States’ understanding of energy, renewable energy, energy conservation, and all the various scientific disciplines that can contribute-physics, materials engineering, chemistry, and more.  These labs are panning for a 21^st century gold-energy discoveries and breakthroughs that will create new batteries using renewable resources, wean the U.S. dependence on oil and coal as primary energy sources, and break new barriers in energy efficiency.

However, the problem has been that these labs have explored a lot, and engaged in extensive primary research, but have punched below their weight class in bringing innovation from discovery through to successful commercialization.  The DOE budget in FY 2009 topped $25 billion.  The national labs budget made up approximately $10 billion of that.  And with the Obama administration’s  stimulus package, these numbers only look to be increasing.  One example brought up in the conversation to punctuate the problem from one of the Boston-based attendees was that fact that Argonne National Laboratory in the last decade has created less than a dozen successful out licensing/royalty events that generated meaningful returns.   Logic holds that in terms of return-on-investment, there remains much room for added improvement.

So, two hours later, what were the issues that were brought up by the braintrust, and potential solutions that were tendered to improve the return on investment the DOE makes in the national laboratory’s innovation mission?

Some of the key issues with the current structure that came out of the dialogue:

•    Risk aversion of national labs researchers to leave the security of the lab to spearhead a risk-laden venture

•    Innate interest of lab researchers is more geared toward research and “discovery” versus market-matching and commercialization

•    Low/no financial incentive to take a discovery beyond research phase

•    No business ecosystem or business-savvy catalysts to help focus lab research talent on “known problems,” or the sifting through lab breakthroughs to match-make with existing  business  problems

Suggestions for improvement focused around the three ingredients that are key to metaphorical “combustion” of the innovation commercialization engine: More…