Philadelphia Innovation Cluster Seen as "Key to Future"

Rendering of Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster at Navy Yard

"I'm a bit like Ryan Howard," Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter told the crowd at the Navy Yard. "I get to bat clean-up and take us on to the championship."

The Mayor's reference to the city's major league baseball team seemed a good analogy for a championship he has long wanted, the title of "Greenest City in America."

The sentiments weren't lost on the other dignitaries, academics, industry leaders, and cleantechies gathered in a tented area on the pier of the Navy Yard's Cruise Ship Terminal to celebrate the launch of the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster for Energy Efficient Buildings (GPIC).

The Mayor opened and closed the ceremonies, which also featured speeches by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Assistant Secretary of Commerce John Fernandez, and Vice President Henry Foley of Penn State.

Penn State led the application for the energy efficiency hub, marshaling a consortium that featured other universities, major corporations such as United Technologies and Turner Construction, as well as a panoply of associations and other businesses.

The result was a successful bid for the nation's only energy efficiency cluster, and $129 million in funding from the Department of Energy (DOE) and other agencies.

The Navy Yard has plenty of old buildings on its 1200 acres and its own micro electricity grid to test new technologies. And the list of players and supporters of the proposal were just too hard to ignore, remarked Secretary Chu, who said that it was "a dream in my eye long before I was at DOE for such a center."

The Secretary confessed that he would have liked the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory win the bid, where he worked prior to becoming the 12th US Secretary of Energy. "But the fact that two of my former grad students are at Penn State makes up for the fact that they didn't get it," Chu quipped.

The GPIC is expected to develop and test new technologies for energy efficiency in buildings, first by renovating an existing structure on the campus.

Poor cooling and ventilation in the facility where the announcement was held provided a good example of the issues that will be addressed by technologies developed at the new innovation cluster.

The GPIC will be led by Penn State in partnership with the City of Philadelphia through its Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, along with Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center, the Wharton Small Business Development Center, and numerous other public, private, and academic partners.

"This is the type of research and technologies that will propel the US going forward," Secretary Chu said. "And this type of broad cooperation exemplified here in Philadelphia will make it work."



(Disclosure: The author is co-founder of the Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic, which provided a letter of support for the Energy Innovation Hub application and is an industry association partner in that effort.)

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Pennsylvania: Keystone in America's Energy Future?

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Long known as the "Keystone State," Pennsylvania is fast becoming key to America's energy future.

With some of the world's largest and best natural gas reserves found in the northwestern part of the state, significant coal reserves already providing electricity for much of the northeastern US, and the country's largest grid operator (PJM) located in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania is already an energy powerhouse.

Increasingly, Pennsylvania is attracting and growing companies in the emerging cleantech arena, including two of the world's largest wind companies (Gamesa and Iberdrola), smart grid and demand response (such as Viridity Energy), and emerging technologies from biofuels to batteries and storage.

Why this convergence? According to Pennsylvania Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection John Hanger, several key policy decisions made over the past several years, along with efforts and incentives to attract companies from as far away as Spain and Greece, combined with the existing energy infrastructure to make the Commonwealth very attractive.

"Over 50 percent of the inquiries the state is getting from companies looking to relocate here are from the cleantech sector," Secretary Hanger told a group of business leaders at the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce's "The Future of Energy" briefing yesterday.

His remarks were echoed by Alice Solomon of Select Greater Philadelphia, who noted that of the 124 companies she's talking to about the region, 20 percent are alternative energy companies. Solomon, speaking at last week's Clean Energy Conference hosted by PennFuture in Camp Hill, said that strategic market location and a rich infrastructure are attracting these companies.

Part of that rich infrastructure statewide is the vast natural gas reserves that lay a mile-deep under much of Pennsylvania and adjacent states, known as the Marcellus Shale formation.

"Natural Gas is the bridge to the clean energy future," Secretary Hanger noted at last week's conference. "And Pennsylvania will soon produce 10 percent of the nation's natural gas. Marcellus is a game changer."

Wither coal? As my pal Gregor MacDonald pointed out in his Gregor.us post yesterday, "global coal consumption was flat in 2009, as consumption of oil and natural gas fell. Coal remains the big story, and will become an even bigger story as we head to 2015."

Secretary Hanger, when asked at yesterday's Chamber briefing about coal's future in the "clean energy" mix said two things. First, that Pennsylvania has policies in development focused on carbon capture and storage (CCS), and second, that the "coal industry must decide whether to fight a carbon constrained future or to get behind CCS and embrace that future."

The coal industry is not alone in resisting change. The natural gas industry continues to fight Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell's push for a severance tax on natural gas extracted from the state's reserves. Rendell's cause may have received a boost earlier this week when a gas well explosion and fire shut down drilling in Clearfield County.

"We needed a severance tax even before the accident," Rendell told reporters from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Secretary Hanger's remarks at the Chamber were more pointed, "Every other state has a severance tax on their resources extracted. It's crazy that Pennsylvania doesn't have a severance tax in place for this incredible reserve."

Clearly, as we've argued on this blog before, there is no silver bullet to meet our energy needs and security. So, too, is there no one place that will meet those needs. Pennsylvania, however, with its combination of resources, infrastructure, supportive policies seems poised to become a "keystone" in the future of energy in the United States.

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