A Question to the Secretaries of Energy and Commerce about U.S. Action on Innovation



At the "Clean Economy Network" event at the White House in Washington, DC October 7th, 2009,

150 cleantech executives spent 90 minutes in a very good session at the White House with the

Secretary of Energy - Stephen Chu and Secretary of Commerce - Gary Locke.

Jim Hurd, Director of the GreenScience Exchange, asked the following question during the Q&A session:

"There has been very good talk about innovation, but the implementation on it needs to be strengthened. We need to commercialize and scale-up the 3-10 year breakthrough technologies the US is developing. The SBIR program needs to be re-authorized. TIP (the new version of the NIST ATP program) needs to happen, and solar R&D has not been increased that much. We need these to compete with initiatives like China's electric and hybrid car push with BYD and Tonji Univ led by Minister of S&T Wan Gang. It is unfortunate that practically no Obama official has talked about the important challenge of Valley of Death commercialization issues."

Secretaries Locke & Chu gave good answers to this question - but the words need to be backed up by dynamic actions in the coming months if the US is to stay competitive.