Program recognizes accelerators, incubators and
university initiatives supporting clean-energy innovation
The Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2), funded by Wells
Fargo Foundation and co-administered by the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory, today announced more than $1 million in support
of eight projects and 19 organizations to address gaps in
clean-energy technology development and commercialization.
The IN2 Channel Partner Awards Program is designed to foster the
development of a robust cleantech ecosystem by funding innovative
accelerators, incubators, and universities, and promoting a
collaborative network of knowledge sharing.
“The Channel Partner Awards Program supports IN2’s ultimate goal
of accelerating the development and deployment of clean
technologies by encouraging a strong, multi-stakeholder ecosystem
that will collectively drive innovation and sustainability,” said
Mary Wenzel, head of Environmental Affairs and Sustainability at
Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC). “Each of the IN2 Channel Partner
Award recipients has displayed a talent for innovation and
disruption, and a commitment to clean technology.”
IN2 Channel Partner Awards recipients
The California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, Calif.)
partnered with Clean Energy Trust (Chicago) to establish the
Rocket Fund Mid-West, an interstate partnership bringing together
sustainability-focused accelerators, utilities and universities in
a community consortium to help guide vulnerable Very Early Stage
ventures through critical early stages. Pioneered in California,
the Rocket Fund Mid-West will offer a solution for one of the most
intractable problems preventing cleantech innovations from reaching
the marketplace – the lack of funding and necessary commercial
partners for building, demonstrating and validating “pre-products”
in the real world.
Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh) partnered with
Northwestern University
(Evanston, Ill.) to launch a new Center for Cleantech
Entrepreneurial Excellence. The goal of the center is to better
understand how cleantech/energy innovation and entrepreneurship
differ from other technology sectors. At a regional level, the
center will examine key success factors in early-stage company
development and how societal outcomes can be enhanced as a
result.
Cleantech Group (San Francisco) to leverage its annual
Cleantech Forum to capture key discussion points and identify
themes to help further inform the direction of the IN2 program as
it considers expanding into the food-systems space.
Activation Energy (San Francisco) in support of the
Cyclotron Road (Berkeley, Calif.) program to develop a
network leveraging Artificial Intelligence to identify a
comprehensive list of strategic partners for emerging clean energy
technologies to disrupt the current partnering and investment model
for bringing new technologies to market, which relies heavily on
human networking. Working in partnership with Moxley Holdings and
Rho AI, their model will identify future partners based on current
investments, partnering trends and natural language analysis of
public statements.
Innosphere (Fort Collins, Colo.) to launch Scaleup
Colorado, a multi-year plan designed to systematically address
three specific problems holding back Colorado’s science and
technology ecosystem from growing at a higher rate and creating
greater economic impact. These challenges include the need to grow
Colorado’s technology GDP by growing startup support capacity;
improving the success rate of early-stage startup companies; and
helping companies grow from startups to companies with more than
$50 million in revenue per year in an environment where there is
limited access to capital.
Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator partnered with
ACRE (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Clean Energy Trust (Chicago),
Greentown Learn (Somerville, Mass.), and NextEnergy
(Detroit) to establish a standard for measuring and reporting the
economic, environmental and social impact of the portfolio
companies within their network. The team will leverage the
incubator’s Just Impact 2016 report and framework, and conduct
individual research within organizations, to evolve a common
framework for training their staff and portfolio companies and
measuring and reporting on their individual impact results.
NextEnergy (Detroit) partnered with Prospect Silicon
Valley (San Jose, Calif.) to ensure that the cleantech
potential of CASE (Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electrified)
mobility solutions are fully realized by entering into a
sister-city partnership between Detroit and San Jose to address two
main challenges — connecting a cleantech innovation pipeline to
industry players and market opportunities, and bringing private
sector/industry partners together with government and nongovernment
organization service providers to encourage a focus on serving low-
to moderate-income market segments.
Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship at Rice
University (Houston), Austin
Technology Incubator at University of
Texas-Austin (Austin, Texas), Texas
A&M Engineering Experiment Station Clean Energy
Incubator (College Station, Texas), and Texas
State University) (San
Marco, Texas) to collaborate on a series of programs and
initiatives that will help catalyze the next generation of
cleantech entrepreneurs and serve as a feeder to the IN2 program.
The “IN2Bound Cleantech Accelerator Program” will focus on
educating entrepreneurs and accelerating startups, and connect them
to a network of experts who can provide technical support and
mentorship.
“IN2 has engaged stakeholders from universities, incubators and
accelerators in an effort to give a voice to local community
challenges and solutions and to create a strong, collaborative
ecosystem of startup support across the country,” said Richard
Adams, director of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center at
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “Our mission is to
nurture an ecosystem where more startups and innovators receive the
technical and financial backing, as well as business mentoring and
encouragement they need at their earliest stages in order to
advance toward commercialization of their technologies.”
The IN2 Channel Partner Awards Program was established with $5
million of committed funding to be distributed over four years. In
2016, the program supported more than 33 channel partners,
encouraging them to engage with their local communities and play an
active role in helping develop the IN2 ecosystem, which currently
includes 20 IN2 portfolio companies, more than 40 channel partners,
and a variety of external clean technology stakeholders across the
U.S. In August 2016, IN2 convened a summit comprised of channel
partners, IN2 stakeholders, investors and subject matter experts
for in-depth discussions on promising clean technology developments
and disruptions, strategic expansion of the IN2 ecosystem and
future initiatives for the IN2 Channel Partner Awards Program. For
more information on the awards program, please visit
http://in2ecosystem.com/.
About the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator
(IN2)
IN2 is a $30 million clean-technology incubator and platform
funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation. Co-administered by and housed
at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado,
IN2’s mission is to speed the path to market for early-stage,
clean-technology entrepreneurs. Companies selected for
participation in the program receive up to $250,000 in non-dilutive
funding from Wells Fargo, technical support and validation from
experts at NREL’s facilities, and the opportunity to beta-test at a
Wells Fargo facility or with a strategic program partner. Launched
in 2014 with an initial focus on supporting scalable solutions to
reduce the energy impact of commercial buildings, IN2 is expanding
its focus in 2018 to support innovation in sectors such as
transportation, commercial buildings, food systems, energy storage,
and others with the ultimate goal of fostering smart and connected
communities of the future. http://in2ecosystem.com/.
About Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a diversified,
community-based financial services company with $1.9 trillion in
assets. Wells Fargo’s vision is to satisfy our customers’ financial
needs and help them succeed financially. Founded in 1852 and
headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking,
insurance, investments, mortgage, and consumer and commercial
finance through more than 8,300 locations, 13,000 ATMs, the
internet (wellsfargo.com) and mobile banking, and has offices in 42
countries and territories to support customers who conduct business
in the global economy. With approximately 268,000 team members,
Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States.
Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 25 on Fortune’s 2017
rankings of America’s largest corporations. The Chronicle of
Philanthropy ranked Wells Fargo No. 3 on its most recent list of
the top corporate cash philanthropists. In 2016, Wells Fargo
donated $281.3 million to 14,900 nonprofits and Wells Fargo team
members volunteered 1.73 million hours with 50,000 nonprofits.
Wells Fargo’s corporate social responsibility efforts are focused
on three priorities: economic empowerment in underserved
communities, environmental sustainability, and advancing diversity
and social inclusion. News, insights and perspectives from Wells
Fargo are also available at Wells Fargo Stories.
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version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180117005486/en/
Wells Fargo MediaE.J. Bernacki,
415-840-4469ejbernacki@wellsfargo.comorIN2
MediaDanielle Calfo, 720-833-5914dcalfo@MAPR.agency
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