The California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF), a non-profit dedicated to investing in clean energy companies, announced the launch of its Center for Innovation and Sustainability, a new public policy arm created to address critical issues affecting the long-term transformation of the energy industry.
The Center will work to identify and address high-level issues of market and policy design, such as the balance between market forces and regulatory mandates, as well as issues specific to particular clean energy technologies, such as barriers to increased energy efficiency, sustainably-derived biofuels, and aggressive renewable electricity development.
The Center for Innovation and Sustainability will identify high-value points of intervention around key issues, seeking to become the "connective tissue" between participants in policy, technology and finance, and develop high-impact recommendations to the policy community.
To attract the best partners in these efforts, the Center will launch an "Entrepreneurs in Residence" program that will bring thought leaders to the Center on a quarterly basis to coordinate a series of stakeholder meetings and produce recommendations around specific clean energy challenges.
The Center will be governed by a Board of Directors, initially comprised of three members of the CalCEF Board: Michael Peevey, President of the California Public Utilities Commission; Art Rosenfeld, Commissioner at the California Energy Commission; and Mason Willirch, Chairman of the California Independent System Operator. Further Board members will be invited from leading public, private and non-profit entities.
CalCEF also announced the promotion of Dan Adler to President. Most recently serving as Vice President, Adler will assume responsibility for managing relationships with CalCEF’s investment partners, identifying critical gaps in the financial architecture of clean energy investing that CalCEF might fill, and ensuring that the newly-formed Center works hand-in-hand with CalCEF’s existing network of world-class policy, technology and finance constituencies.
"To date, CalCEF has been very successful in engaging the venture capital community and promoting a supportive environment for transformational technologies that reduce fossil dependency and address global climate change," Adler said. "But this is only part of the challenge to transforming the energy system, which will require a much more robust and foresighted effort from public policy."
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