"The city of San Francisco is a national leader in its support of programs that promote sustainable living and environmental improvement," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. "The California Clean Tech Open creates an opportunity for the city to partner with area businesses to magnify these efforts, establish a new category of local industry and create an abundance of new, high-quality jobs for our residents. We're honored to host this inaugural competition."
Initiated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Club of Northern California (MITCNC), the Clean Tech Open is aimed at turning ideas into real businesses, creating new jobs as part of the expanding clean tech economy in California. The inaugural competition opens in April Winners will be announced in September at a finals event in the Bay Area. The best plan submitted from five categories—Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Smart Power, Transportation, and Water Management—will be awarded a bundle of prizes to create a sustainable business.
"Economic growth and environmental preservation are two sides of the same coin," said Terry Tamminen, special advisor to the governor of California and former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency. "There's no better illustration of that point than the California Clean Tech Open, which challenges California entrepreneurs to bring new, clean technologies to market. I encourage business leaders, policy makers, and environmental advocates to support this innovative, exciting competition."
The competition encourages professionals and students throughout the state to submit proposals and compete for prizes in five categories: California Investor Owned Utilities Energy Efficiency Prize, AMD Smart Power Prize, Lexus Transportation Prize, Agora Foundation Water Management Prize, and the Renewable Energy Prize, which has yet to be named. Judges selected from a panel of experts—including venture capitalists, researchers and faculty from the state’s leading universities and research laboratories and leading industrialists from related sectors—will select a winner in each category and an overall winner.
“The Clean Tech Open convenes the state’s best and brightest minds to develop technological solutions to some extremely complex and important problems,” said Art Rosenfeld, California Energy Commissioner. “This is a competition with no losers. All of California, and the rest of the world, benefit when natural resources are used more efficiently.”
