Creed: key player in cleantech: launch of Energy Innovation Portal designed to move technology from lab to marketplace.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION

CREED THE COLDRADD CENTER FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY Economic Development, celebrates its First anniversary this year, but forget any talk about baby steps.

CREED already has taken giant steps.

One reason For CREED's rapid progress is its long gestation period. So while Ole center opened officially a year ago, it was in the works since at least 2007. if not below.

We say, "if not before" because CREED also might be said to have come about because of NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which opened operations in 1974 and which began operating as the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden in 1977. In September 1991 the U.S. Department Energy (D0E) designated the facility a national laboratory and changed its name to NREL.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Four years ago, the Alliance for Sustainable Energy LLC, a joint venture between Battelle and MRIGlobal, won the contract to manage NREL. Due in large part to mid-2000s energy legislation, the mandate for winning that contract included a strong commercialization program.

William Farris was part of the team designing what came to be CREED back in 2007.

"By design we wanted CREED to exist because we felt that, as NREL, and as the alliance that is managing the laboratory, we could do a lot more in the area of tech-based economic development, helping cleantech companies grow, thrive, survive through the stages or development, even if those companies did not necessarily have their roots in NREL, and are not necessarily just our licensing partners," says Farris, NREL vice president for commercialization and technology transfer

Farris was part of the then-new team at NREL in 2008, moving over to the Alliance for Sustainable Energy from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, with 20 years' experience in technology commercialization in DOE labs.

"Our sponsors at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) at DOE, have a mission, so we see it is our role to help these cleantech companies because that's in our mission space," Farris says.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"We will help our licensees, but say there's a battery company that didn't have its roots in NREL, but could benefit from the association with NREL. We can help them with their techno-economic analysis," Farris says, for example.

"We also have what we call convening power as the laboratory. A lot of people look to NREL, and a lot of investors and other people who are interested in renewable energy businesses will call us up and...