This public-private consortium, called First Look West (FLoW), builds upon the mission of the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) to improve energy efficiency and productivity and bring reliable, affordable clean technologies to market.
The DOE developed the National University Clean Energy Business Challenge under the Obama Administration’s Startup America initiative to broaden innovation and commercialization efforts, and to champion a nation-wide energy entrepreneurship ecosystem. Over the following three years, funds totaling $2 million dollars will be distributed to six regional competitions with the objective of building a new generation of energy leaders, a strong workforce, and an overall green economy.
FLoW’s mission is to support the development of entrepreneurial talent within American universities, and to accelerate the movement of leading edge technologies out of the lab and into the marketplace. FLoW’s region stretches from California to Alaska, Idaho to Hawaii, and embraces a wide diversity of academic talent and business acumen, bent on devising new clean energy solutions to our power problems.
In building the competition throughout the region FLoW will leverage its connections to the strong business development and entrepreneurship community of Southern California, and its proximity to one of the largest clusters of cleantech companies in the country.