At the "Clean Economy Network" event at the White House in Washington, DC October 7th, 2009,
150 cleantech executives spent 90 minutes in a very good session at the White House with the
Secretary of Energy - Stephen Chu and Secretary of Commerce - Gary Locke.
Jim Hurd, Director of the GreenScience Exchange, asked the following question during the Q&A session:
"There has been very good talk about innovation, but the implementation on it needs to be strengthened.
We need to commercialize and scale-up the 3-10 year breakthrough technologies the US is developing.
The SBIR program needs to be re-authorized.
TIP (the new version of the NIST ATP program) needs to happen, and solar R&D has not been increased that much.
We need these to compete with initiatives like China's electric and hybrid car push with BYD and Tonji Univ
led by Minister of S&T Wan Gang. It is unfortunate that practically no Obama official has
talked about the important challenge of Valley of Death commercialization issues."
Secretaries Locke & Chu gave good answers to this question - but the words need to be backed up by dynamic
actions in the coming months if the US is to stay competitive.