A high-powered group of state and local leaders met in Austin on Friday with officials from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as the lab explores the prospect of collaborating with Central Texas groups on clean-energy initiatives.
The delegation from the U.S. Department of Energy lab was led by Robert McGrath, the lab’s deputy director for science and technology. Also attending were Robert Hawsey, an associate lab director for renewable electricity and end-use systems; Pete Sheldon, a scientist in the lab’s National Center for Photovoltaics, and David Ginley, a research fellow working with HelioVolt Corp., a pioneering solar power technology company in Austin.
“Texas is moving forward smartly and aggressively with deployment of renewable and energy efficiency technologies,” McGrath said. “We see multiple opportunities for partnerships for technology development and for renewable energy and energy efficiency deployment with many of the industry and university groups with which we met today.”
McGrath said his organization, which is based in Golden, Colo., wants to “capitalize upon the very productive, long-standing and continuing collaboration that NREL has with HelioVolt.”
Friday’s introductory meeting with state officials, led by Comptroller Susan Combs, included representatives from Gov. Rick Perry’s policy office and the Texas Enterprise Fund, state and federal lawmakers or their aides and Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce representatives.
Another meeting took place with managers of area utilities, including Austin Energy and CPS Energy of San Antonio, and officials with the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems and Texas State University.
McGrath said the officials all “enthusiastically encouraged” the lab’s expanded participation in planning and implementing renewable energy projects in Texas.
Laboratory officials also toured HelioVolt’s Southeast Austin plant with company executives and U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin.
“Obviously we want to transform Texas into a clean-technology leader, and we want to make the greater Austin region a center of innovation for clean technologies,” said Jose Beceiro, director of clean-energy initiatives for the Austin chamber.
Beceiro said local officials have been talking to the lab for a while. He was not at Friday’s meetings but has been involved in previous discussions about collaborating with the lab.
A larger presence of the lab in the Austin area could help recruit clean-technology companies and green jobs, developing new clean-energy technologies and attracting more federal grant money, Beceiro said.
B.J. Stanbery, chairman of both HelioVolt and the nonprofit Texas Foundation for Innovative Communities, said that “Central Texas’ unique combination of diverse utility markets, world-class research institutions and farsighted public leadership provide an opportunity for NREL to further their mission of accelerating commercialization and deployment of renewable energy.”
Bob King, president of Good Company Associates Inc., a business development consulting practice focused on energy efficiency and renewable energy, said his company helped the Texas Foundation for Innovative Communities organize Friday’s meetings.
King emphasized that discussions are in the early stages about how “the Central Texas communities can benefit from a relationship with our national lab,” which he called “the only national lab whose entire responsibility is energy efficiency and renewable energy.”
King said the meetings were productive.
“Everyone left with the next actions to take, and we’ll be having follow-up meetings,” he said. “This could be a long process, but I think we made some progress today.”
Article courtesy AAS, snovak@statesman.com; 445-3856
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