Syracuse, NY
When most people think of New York, they’re quick to conjure up images of the Empire State Building and Wall Street. But in the era of clean energy, New York’s emerging ‘Green Apple’ is giving the renowned Big Apple a run for its money as the innovation center of the state. With over 30 colleges and universities, the Central Upstate New York region has one of the highest concentrations of students in the country. Couple that with market leaders such as GE Global Research, GM Research and Carrier Corporation that are developing world class new clean technologies, along with $2 billion in annually funded R&D at the region’s top six research institutions, and you’ve got a region prime for green technology incubation. The Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce has been leading that green revolution. In July of 2009 with a $1.5 million grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the Syracuse Chamber proudly unveiled The Clean Tech Center, a clean energy business incubator program—one of the first of its kind in the country.
Throughout the past decade, the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce has led extraordinary efforts to rebuild Central New York’s economy around a culture of entrepreneurism. The Chamber is a strong member of New York’s Creative Core, a regional alliance of nearly 200 organizations working to advance industry clusters such as energy and environmental systems, biosciences and information technologies. The Chamber worked with federal, state and local leaders to launch The Syracuse Technology Garden in 2004, a once vacant city-owned 32,000 square-foot building reborn as an incubation center that now houses 30 businesses with a combined payroll of more than $5 million.
Beyond supporting tech entrepreneurship through The Technology Garden, the Greater Syracuse Chamber has led the way for green innovation as one of the founding members of the Green Team, an arm of the Creative Core supporting clean tech business development in Central Upstate New York. With more than 400 regional firms employing nearly 11,000 in this sector, the Chamber is hardly starting from scratch in efforts to drive the region into the ranks of Silicon Valley and Route 128. In fact, The Clean Tech Center has already been named one of the top ten clean tech cluster organizations in the world by Sustainable World Capital in a February 2010 Cleantech Group report.
Housed within the Technology Garden, The Clean Tech Center nurtures developing businesses in areas such as: renewable energy, alternative fuels, system integration and smart grid technologies, transportation, and green buildings and construction technologies. Early-stage companies receive intensive mentoring on product development, commercialization, and funding strategies. Through partnerships with academic and financial institutions, industry leaders, investors, utilities, service providers, and government agencies, The Clean Tech Center is able to provide green businesses an effective network of financial and technical services. Companies enrolled in the Center can also seek guidance on prototype development, testing, and navigating the slippery issue of intellectual property rights. To date, over 90 clean tech companies have received technical assistance from the Center. An intensive “path to commercialization” program admits nine to ten emerging businesses each semester who are developing new technologies with demonstrated market potential.
As noted by former Syracuse Mayor, Matthew J. Driscoll, now President and CEO of the New York Environmental Facilities Corporation, “Syracuse’s and Central New York’s economic future will depend on the development of green industry. The business incubator program through The Clean Tech Center will accelerate this development.” The ground-breaking efforts of the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce are putting the Syracuse region on the map as an economic powerhouse and national leader in green innovation.