San Jose Gets Serious About Clean Tech’s Sustainable Future
For San Jose, converting 100 percent of public fleet vehicles to run on alternative fuels and electric vehicles is part of the city’s 10-point “Green Vision“, a 15 year plan of action, including such laudable environmental goals as reducing per capita energy use by 50%; switching to 100% clean renewable energy; recycling or reusing 100% of wastewater, and; creating 25,000 new jobs in the clean tech sector alone.
Part of the economic engine needed to achieve the aforementioned job growth in the clean tech sector is helping entrepreneurs move their ideas from the back of a cocktail napkin to the front page of the business section. Enter: The Clean Tech Open.
Spawning Clean Tech
Expanding to the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain regions this year, the Clean Tech Open is a contest 
that awards early stage clean tech businesses with critical support in their formative years. Early stage startups are invited to enter in six competition categories: renewable energy, transportation, smart power, energy efficiency, green building, and air/water/waste management.
In addition to the recognition/exposure, regional winners are awarded with packages that include: $50,000 cash, office space, legal services, accounting, insurance, public relations, recruiting, software, and other business essentials. Regional winners are also now entered into the national competition with an even larger purse.
“We’ve seen some exciting products and companies come out of the Clean Tech Open in previous years,” said Reed, citing the company GreenVolts and their concentrating solar photovoltaic technology as an example of how a company can take the spoils of winning the Clean Tech Open and really springboard into the marketplace.
Some argue that the key to creating a sustainable future on this planet will be found in developments in urban sustainability. How can hundreds of thousands or millions of people live, work, and play in such a confined space without having a collective footprint that spreads well beyond the city limits? San Jose believes it has found some of those answers, but certainly not all.
And as for those Perergrine Falcons that have nested on the roof? Mayor Reed told me that the pair of adults is watching over four eggs, so he is hopeful.
Images: dbdbrobot via flickr; Clayton Cornell, gas2.0.
It would seem logical that San Jose and Silicon Valley would lead the way with alternative and renewable energy technology, but I’m surprised that more hasn’t been done in this area to date. This may be do to the mindset that innovation (and dollars) applies more to consumer products instead of infrastructure initiatives, but this is a viewpoint that needs to change.
For sure, investment in infrastructure is much less “sexy.”
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