More on Developing International CleanTech Markets

Clean technology will certainly be one of the fastest growing international markets over the next five years. Both governments and consumers are demanding reductions in emissions and more environmentally friendly products. New products will be created around the globe and good ideas created in one place will quickly migrate worldwide. One good example of the flow of ideas and technology is between the United States and Germany due to a common effort of governments, associations and private sector producers. Germany recognized early on that it needed to lessen dependence on imported oil and gas, not only for national security reasons but also for environmental health. The country started a research program through its research laboratory system in the late 1970's. With reunification, ordinary Germans were confronted in the former East Germany with the consequences of governments ignoring environmental impacts. The research programs continued producing number of interesting advances in both wind and solar generation, but the costs were still far above conventional generation. When the SPD came into power in 1998, the government instituted subsidies for solar and wind installation and set up a system that allowed producers to sell back to the grid. Having demonstrated that renewables could be competitive given the right regulatory framework, the German companies turned toward the US market as a way to allow greater efficiencies of production. I accompanied Sigmar Gabriel, then Minister-President of Lower Saxony and current Environment Minister of Germany on a visit in 2000 to Boston, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Accompanying him were the manufacturers of solar and wind generation equipment. In addition, German companies started their own marketing efforts. When I came to live in the Bay Area in 2002, I joined the fledgling German American Business Association of California. GABA early on focused on clean tech, providing a platform for German companies to meet US customers and to understand the regulatory environment. It is not surprising that the leading international companies in renewable energy are German. The takeaway from this discussion: To develop international clean tech markets, we need to put together coalitions of governments, associations and producers. Those efforts will only be successful in so far as technologies are price competitive, given the right incentives from the regulatory structure.