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“Delivery company, which he wanted to staff with returning veterans. He finished his tour
of duty, finished his thesis – with the help of a grant from the Renewable Energy
Trust – and started his company, which is called NexAmp. As Dan puts it, at first it
was him, his laptop and a pickup truck. But in just two years, NexAmp has grown to a 12
person operation, most of them veterans by the way, located in North Andover, and the
company provides not just solar services but integrated services for all sorts of energy
options. They are looking to add 5 more jobs by the end of this summer. NexAmp is currently
developing an installation-finance package that requires no upfront costs for the customer,
under a lease-to-buy arrangement. This innovative financing will avoid the barrier of high up-front
costs that keep solar out of reach for many customers. NexAmp is shooting for 1.5 megawatts
of installations using this approach, partly by leveraging the incentives from the Commonwealth
Solar program I talked about earlier. Here’s another way to visualize the Massachusetts
clean energy economy tale: A couple of weeks ago, I went out to the wastewater treatment
plant on Deer Island, in Boston Harbor, in part to celebrate the installation of a large
solar PV system. And there it all was, all of it together: solar panels by Evergreen;
inverters by Solectria, based in Lawrence; installation by Borrego Solar, a California
company that opened an office in Chelmsford earlier this year and that is moving to a
larger space in Lowell next month – they employ 22 people today, and are planning to
make this their East Coast headquarters; the electrical work was done by Lighthouse Electrical,
a Pembroke-based contractor that is just one of many finding growth opportunities in renewable
energy systems. Now some of you I know prefer to focus on the clean energy opportunities
for its opportunity to save the world and that is vitally important. But there is a
pedestrian part of my job which is also worrying about our economic future and what a fantastic
thing to have these two interests coalesce. And that is something we are uniquely positioned
to take advantage of in this Commonwealth. We have the brain power and the tradition
of innovation that makes the clean-tech sector a natural home here in Massachusetts. But
we have to cultivate it and we have to work together to make that happen and I’m trying
to give you some examples of how we intend to do that and we welcome your ideas. Solar
power is just one clean energy technology, as you all know. Many others show potential
for the same synergy of government/academy/private investment that translates into companies,
jobs, and progress toward a clean energy future for Massachusetts and the whole world. Another
one is biofuels. In the coming week, I’ll be receiving the report of an Advanced Biofuels
Task Force established by me, the Senate President, and the Speaker of the House last November
and we say ‘advanced’ biofuels because today’s biofuels don’t help us to tackle
greenhouse gas emissions, and they compete with our food supply. Our state is uniquely
suited to become a world center of biofuels that don’t come from corn and soy but from
cellulose, an abundant feedstock that comes from forestry products, the organic waste
stream, and agricultural products that can be grown here in New England, like switchgrass.
The trick is how to convert the stuff to energy. Researchers around the world have been scrambling
to come up with the best process. At UMass-Amherst, a team of scientists lead by Susan Lescine,
a professor of microbiology, discovered a bacteria that converts cellulose to ethanol
in a single step. The discovery of the Q Microbe led to a spin-off company, SunEthanol, which
currently employs six people and is looking to grow rapidly. This growth will be fueled
by the proposal I have made, in partnership with the legislative leadership, to exempt
cellulosic ethanol from the state gasoline tax, an incentive to get fuel blenders and
distributors to adopt cellulosic ethanol as soon as it hits the market. Here’s another
one: battery power. If SunEthanol might supply new sustainable fuels for powering cars, another
Massachusetts company is figuring out how to efficiently store that kind of energy in
batteries to provide a clean source of power for a range of applications. The work of MIT’s
Yet-Ming Chiang, a Professor of Material Science, and his lab, created the spin-off A123 Systems.
The technology they employ I can barely pronounce but I am going to try it: highly active nanoscale
low impedance Nanophosphate electrode technology.” (Applause) “Don’t ask me to do that without
my notes in front of me. If I understand it, what this means is lower cost, smaller, lighter
batteries with greater capacities and longer life, and one of the applications is plug-in
hybrid automobiles, which can get mileage of more than 100 miles per gallon. Headquartered
in Watertown, A123 has grown into a global company, with $100 million in private funding,
800 employees, and about 100 here in the Bay State. Just last week, A123 submitted a bid
for the state’s pilot program to retrofit existing state hybrid cars into super-efficient
plug-in hybrids. And we have high hopes for the spin-off potential of another technology
and that is wind power. When I came to office, Massachusetts had a reputation for being anti-wind.
The Cape Wind project was opposed by virtually every major state political figure. We had
installed precious few wind mills anywhere in Massachusetts. In short, the Commonwealth
had been talking about renewable energy, but doing little about it when it came to wind
and I have done my level best with the help of the team I asked to stand to change that.
Last year, Massachusetts was chosen by the federal Department of Energy to host to one
of just two Wind Technology Testing Centers in the United States. This facility, which
will be located in Charlestown in the shadow of the Tobin Bridge, will assess the structural
integrity and durability of commercial wind-turbine blades of up to 230 feet in length. We view
the Blade Test Facility as the beginning. We have the opportunity now to turn that waterfront
port area in Charlestown into a hub for offshore wind R&D. Offshore wind has enormous potential
for large scale renewable power – and we aim to become the world’s hub for that too.
We are actively pursuing some of the world’s leading players in wind to come now to Massachusetts
– and places like MIT and UMass are a key part of our sales strategy to attract them.
All of these breakthroughs in clean energy technology will lead to a range of new technical
jobs putting these technologies to work in our homes, our buildings, our cars, our power
grid – and keeping them working. Over the last several years, our state colleges, community
colleges and 40 Vocational Technical Education High Schools have begun developing clean energy
technology training programs, and we’re going to need them. The clean energy sector
in Massachusetts employs more than 14,000 people now, and is growing fast and graduates
of these programs will be in high demand. As you can see, my goal for Massachusetts
is not only to encourage the use of clean energy and efficiencies, but also to nurture
a clean energy industry born in Massachusetts, grown in Massachusetts, and selling to the
world. Massachusetts can benefit from the whole human chain of clean energy technology
development and adoption: the professors and the graduate students who do basic research
and test applications; the entrepreneurs who take that basic research and commercialize
it; the private investors willing to take risks on promising but unproven products;
the designers who figure out how to incorporate new technologies in buildings, cars, and manufacturing;
the service providers who install the panels, replace old windows with new, set up energy
management systems and maintain them; and the consumers who choose the new technology
to heat or cool their houses and their workplaces to get from here to there, or to light their
space. To some, it may seem odd to spend Earth Day talking about ways to grow a new industry.
But there’s nothing odd about it. Ecology and economy share the same Greek root: oikos,
which means house, or dwelling place. Economy was about managing the household, ecology
about studying the habitat that we live. It has never been more important for economy
and ecology to work together than it is today. The threat of irreversible climate change
looms on the horizon and not the distant horizon. But avoiding it will take not only commitment
but ingenuity – the kind of ingenuity that starts in a lab or in a workshop, but changes
the world. I hope everyone here will help us build, right here in Massachusetts, the
clean energy industry that saves the planet. Thank you so much for having me today.”
(Applause)