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The Emerging Industry and Why Austin?
"Clean energy" is the phrase for an emerging segment of the energy industry
focused on technologies for reducing the cost of energy, increasing its
supply and availability, and eliminating the pollution and waste so often
associated with its production and distribution. These technologies include
fuel cells, photovoltaics, wind, geothermal, and others.
Several of these technologies are only one or two small breakthroughs away
from becoming fully competitive. The goal is to make clean energy cheaper,
better and more profitable than any conventional alternative and to make
Austin a center for the production of clean energy technologies.
Why is this important?
The goal is not austerity, doing less with less, nor efficiency, doing more
with the same. Rather, the ACE Initiative's objective is to generate an
increase in the region GDP, create jobs, and generate sustainable, profitable
companies, with far better environmentally sustaining energy technologies. A
few data points on the potential:
- Worldwide, the market for the major clean energy technologies is expected to average $180 billion per year over the next 20 years, on par with the worldwide semiconductor market (which was under $150 billion in 2001 and expected to remain about the same for 2002)
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This huge global market for clean energy will be larger still if nations
respond to their populaces' demands to clean up the air, expand grid access
for and purchasing of "green power," and provide alternate sources of cheap
energy.
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The Pacific Northwest, another region interested and active in promoting
Clean Energy development, recently commissioned a report citing the growth of
the CE sector - with little public policy change - as expecting to grow to
$2.5 billion a year over the next 20 years and over 12,000 jobs.
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Silicon Valley venture capital magnate John Doerr has dubbed clean water,
transportation, and energy "the big markets of the future."
The Austin metropolitan community is a natural home for clean energy
innovation.
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The business environment is unusually open, friendly and supportive.
Business support services including investment, legal, accounting and other
professionals are readily available.
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The labor force is well-educated with an abundance of trained workers and
college-educated and post-graduate professionals.
- An active renewable energy industry association is well-established, the
TexasRenewable Energy Industry Association (www.treia.org)
- The emergence of the Clean Energy Incubator at the Austin Technology
Incubator (www.ic2-ati.org) as a magnet for promising clean energy companies
places Austin among a very small number of communities with such a resource.
- The University of Texas offers superb, first-rank research capabilities.
Other universities offer a full range of higher education alternatives.
- Surrounded by natural beauty and blessed by a favorable climate, Austin
has an abundance of resources, both natural and human, which make it an ideal
"production location" for certain CE products and services
- An active, involved citizenry has created a vibrant community with many
lifestyle amenities and strong interest in preserving quality of life, thus
representing a strong multi-million consumer market for CE products and
services.
- Austin is on the "world map," having received the only Earth Summit Award
given to the United States for its establishment of the first Green Builder
Program for any US city.
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