Lake Tahoe institute and Berkeley National Laboratory partner in project

A Lake Tahoe area public-private energy organization and the U.S. Energy Department have teamed up to make renewable energy more commercially available.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Incline Village-based Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization today announced their collaboration to accelerate the commercialization of a clean technology innovation owned and developed by the Laboratory.

The pilot program pairs NIREC's Entrepreneur-In-Residence Program with Berkeley Lab's world-class clean energy research to meet defined market needs.

The EIR Program is a year-long “high-touch” engagement fostering technology development and communication between industry and researchers through NIREC's collaborative network of business experts, research partners (including the Nevada System of Higher Education institutions and the University of California, Davis), entrepreneurs industry partners, government agencies and private sector funding sources.

Led by an EIR with market-relevant expertise, the selected innovation team will be awarded funding and pre-commercialization services to achieve important technical and commercial milestones, and create a structured commercialization plan. NIREC’s proven interstate collaboration model links the resources and technologies of California and Nevada, two states with key roles in clean energy development, deployment and utilization.

"By collaborating with NIREC, Berkeley Lab can direct expertise and resources toward the rapid commercialization of a Berkeley Lab clean energy invention," said Berkeley Lab's Business Development Manager Pamela Seidenman. " We look forward to partnering with NIREC to support the technology transfer process."

Since 1990, Berkeley Lab technologies have formed the basis for 30 startup companies, creating nearly 2,400 jobs with a full job impact of close to 13,000. The spending impact of these start-up companies totals $1.6 billion in California and $2.8 billion nationally, according to an economic study done earlier this year.

"The national labs are among our nation’s greatest treasures," said NIREC's Director of Operations Li Han Chan. "Berkeley Lab is a premier source of world-class research, but commercializing clean energy technology is extremely challenging. We expect this pilot program to be a model for accelerating commercialization in the national labs—a model that is focused on bridging the gap between the research orientation of the labs and the market solutions required by industry."

NIREC has prepared a white paper discussing how a dynamic ecosystem (or network), developed uniquely for each new innovation, helps circumvent inadequacies in the broader commercialization infrastructure and provides the basis for the "technology pull" approach used by NIREC for renewable energy commercialization. Click here to download the plan.

Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California for the DOE Office of Science. Visit Berkeley Lab’s Technology Transfer website: http://www.lbl.gov/tt.

NIREC, hosted by Sierra Nevada College, is an nonprofit organization that integrates researchers, experienced entrepreneurs, business executives, and financial capital to identify, fund and accelerate the development and deployment of clean energy solutions. With a focus on renewable energy, energy conservation and energy efficiency technologies, NIREC works to transform clean energy ideas into sustainable enterprises.