This year has brought a lot of productive give-and-take of ideas on clean energy innovation by people around the world who saw opportunity rather than doom in the combination of environmental and financial challenges. Last May, for example, I joined over 140 participants from all sectors at the White House Energy Innovation Conference to discuss how to accelerate energy innovation and support entrepreneurs and small businesses in the energy sector. During follow-up regional meetings in June, scientists, entrepreneurs, innovators, venture capitalists, military and government experts, and others discussed policy and processes that can enhance all stages of the energy innovation pipeline. Earlier this month, the United Nations Environment Program and the Renewable Energy P
olicy Network for the 21st Century showed concrete results (at least in terms of effort) when they revealed in a pair of new reports that by early 2010 more than 100 countries enacted policies to boost the development of a green economy and businesses in the fields of renewable energy and energy efficiency. 
Scientists and entrepreneurs have also mobilized. Take the work of MIT’s Angela Belcher, who appears to have worked out how to genetically engineer viruses to build both the positively and negatively charged ends of a Lithium-ion battery that has the same capacity and performance as the state-of-the-art battery that A123, an MIT startup, will start rolling out in plug-in hybrids next year. Last week, I witnessed firsthand more history of clean energy in the making at the 2010 Cleantech Open Conference in San Jose, CA. This important gathering stemmed from a group of California-based entrepreneurs who decided it was time to get serious about building a new green economy through clean technology innovation. Members of the Cleantech Open decided to expand their business plan competition program around the world through a global Ideas Competition, which I had the pleasure of launching last week. This competition follows a trend of a global cleantech mindset that detects market opportunities beyond the artificial grid of national boundaries by engaging thousands of individual minds working on other innovations (for an example of this trend, listen to Erik Straser talk about Clean Tech's Global Opportunity).
To read the full, original article click on this link: Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship | Combing the World for Cleantech Entrepreneurs
Author: Jonathan Ortmans is president of the Public Forum Institute, a
non-partisan organization dedicated to fostering dialogue on important
policy issues. In this capacity, he leads the Policy Dialogue on
Entrepreneurship, focused on public policies to promote entrepreneurship
in the U.S. and around the world. In addition, he serves as a senior
fellow at the Kauffman Foundation.
