65.5 F
San Diego
Monday, Mar 18, 2024
-Advertisement-

Research Plus Innovation Propel Clean-Tech Growth in 2010

San Diego’s emerging clean technology cluster continues to help green the local economy. From solar power and wind technologies to clean transportation, smart sensors, energy-storage systems and biofuels, the region is chock-full of companies that are making great strides in sustainability as well as creating new jobs.

The number of clean technology companies in San Diego is nearly 650 and growing rapidly, according to CleanTECH San Diego, a nonprofit working to accelerate San Diego’s position as a world leader in the clean energy economy. CleanTECH San Diego advocates for new sources of investment capital, work force development, federal and state research funding, international trade, targeted regulation, and sustainable land use planning and development for local “green” companies.

Lisa Bicker, CleanTECH San Diego’s president and CEO, said this burgeoning industry mirrors the region’s biotech community, which was largely spun out of local research institutes and universities, namely UC San Diego.

“One in three biotechs in San Diego was started from local university research. If that’s any indication for the clean-tech industry, that bodes well for creating a very robust clean-tech economic cluster,” Bicker said. “Our region knows how to build and support clusters. The key to that success is a strong correlation between our rich university research and the private sector.”

Another big shot in the arm for San Diego’s clean-tech cluster during the last year has been an abundance of federal stimulus dollars. A coalition of San Diego stakeholders, led by CleanTECH San Diego, recently netted $154 million in allocations for financing renewable energy projects for public facilities under the Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, or CREBs, program. The federal stimulus funding will pay for 192 solar installation projects for public facilities, which will promote hundreds of new green jobs and increase the capacity of locally produced solar energy by more than 40 percent with an estimated 20 megawatts of additional solar power.

Gasoline From Algae

The total allocations to the San Diego region make up 19 percent of the total allocations going to public agencies nationwide.

“We have seen San Diego be very aggressive; we have gotten more than our fair share of federal stimulus money and I expect that to continue,” Bicker said.

Another major stimulus coup for the local clean technology industry this year was San Diego-based Sapphire Energy’s $104.5 million in federal funding to build a 300-acre commercial scale, algae-based biofuel operation in southern New Mexico. Sapphire has developed a proprietary process for turning oil from algae into renewable gasoline that is genetically identical to sweet crude pumped from the ground. The company calls its green crude a “drop-in solution” to the search for alternative fuels because its algae-based gasoline can replace petroleum as fuel for ground and air transportation, without any modification to refineries, pipelines or vehicles. The company will use its new demonstration plant in New Mexico to grow algae in ponds and refine it into a variety of fuels. Sapphire would continue to work on the project for several years.

“What we have learned is that we need fuels that are similar to the hydrocarbons we use today,” said Tim Zenk, Sapphire’s vice president of corporate affairs. “Algae is leading the way in that whole discovery because 500 million years ago algae died and settled into the great basins of the world and created the carbons we know today. The federal government did investigate this during the first oil crisis during the Carter administration but they didn’t have the advantage of modern biology.”

Although Sapphire, which launched in 2007, is building its plant in New Mexico, Zenk said San Diego is the perfect home base for companies in this hot space.

“San Diego is a great place to have a company focused on this because you have the infrastructure, the research assistance and the biotech cluster,” he said. “It’s important that there are other companies in the area doing it, such as General Atomics and SAIC, which have grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

“There is recognition that if you’re going to be in the algae space you need to think about San Diego,” Zenk said. “But we need to put a heck of a lot more resources into the academic side of the research to really take this to the next level.”

Sapphire Energy — which is collaborating with leading scientists from the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute; UCSD; The Scripps Research Institute; and The University of Tulsa — is backed by a group of investors, including ARCH Venture Partners, The Wellcome Trust and Venrock.

About 85 percent of Sapphire’s 140 employees are in San Diego, with the rest located in New Mexico. Zenk said the company’s work force will be fairly stable between now and 2010. He did not disclose the privately-held company’s revenues.

“We will be focused next year on moving forward on the refinery in New Mexico,” he said. “Our science will be focused on finalizing the strains of algae that will be introduced into the open pond systems there.”

Expectations For Banner Year

As for the overall clean technology cluster in San Diego, Bicker with CleanTECH said 2010 will be another banner year.

“I think you will see some really terrific work around storage and batteries. In particular, UCSD has won some major awards in the area of storage solutions,” she said. “There are a lot of opportunities in some core areas to excel.”

Andrea Siedsma is a freelance writer for the Business Journal.

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

Oberon Eyes Europe for Renewable DME

Leaders of Influence in Law 2024

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-