Colorado clean tech goes to Washington.

• Author: Cote, Mike
• Position: COTE'S colorado - Colorado Cleantech Industry Association - Conference news

Forget that schism between Wall Street and Main Street. If you want money these days, you'll find your bankers at the nation's capital, especially if you're a clean-tech company from the state whose governor swears he coined the phrase "New Energy Economy."

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes $61.3 billion for clean energy initiatives, including renewable energy, energy efficiency, updating the electrical grid and energy research projects plus billions more in tax incentives. You can bet the state where President Barack Obama flew in to sign the stimulus plan in February is lining up to secure some of that capital.

"Washington is the new Wall Street," lobbyist Kyle Simpson told a group of about 100 businesspeople gathered at a meeting of the newly launched Colorado Cleantech Industry Association in April. "They've put a big collection of dollars behind this like they've never done before over a sustained period."

Simpson works for the law firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the association's lobbying arm. Speaking to the Denver group via Web conferencing from Washington, D.C., Simpson and fellow policy director Mike McAdams offered a primer on how to apply for funding. They noted that federal agencies used to working on long-range projects are having difficulty adjusting to programs that must be allocated by 2010.

This administration is pushing extremely hard in order to meet the timelines for the stimulus funds," Simpson said.

In other words, the government can't get the money out the door fast enough. Projects that have been sitting on the shelf waiting for money are the most likely candidates, as are consortiums that include several entities, such as companies and research institutions studying battery technology

"I don't see a lot of major capital-intensive projects in the year ahead without federal government involvement," said John Herrick, senior counsel in the law firm's Denver office and a 15-year veteran of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Herrick said state officials will need to demonstrate "creativity and courage," the latter for the public backlash some projects might face on talk radio. And with tight deadlines, they shouldn't wait around for new guidelines from federal officials, he said.

"Given the time schedule ... I don't think that state officials will have that luxury," he said.

Jeff Bisberg, CEO and president of Albeo Technologies, was among the representatives of cleantech startups who attended the...