Thank You to Colorado's Cleantech Community

As we head further into the holiday season, we want to take this opportunity to say "Thank You!" to all of our members, partners and colleagues for your support throughout 2011. We, the CCIA team of staff and volunteers, greatly appreciate your support throughout the year. Because of your partnership, we've had a very successful year working on your behalf. Following are a few highlights.

Earlier in the year, with intense lobbying from the CCIA, the Colorado General Assembly passed a $20 million funding stream for the clean technology grant program to provide seed stage funding to Colorado cleantech companies and proof of concept funding for university research projects. Governor John Hickenlooper signed the bill at a Colorado Cleantech Research awards event on May 26.

CCIA’s relationship with NREL became more formalized with the opening of the NREL- and State of Colorado-sponsored Colorado Center for Renewable Energy Economic Development (CREED), a multi-tenant facility catalyzing the growth of Colorado’s cleantech industry. CCIA is one of the anchor tenants at the CREED facility and partnered with NREL during 2011 to offer industry programming including an Entrepreneurial Series and Finance Accelerator Series. These series will continue with the strong NREL-CCIA partnership that’s been created.

In early November, CCIA helped launch the national Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) network in Denver, along with Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. CCIA is one of the founding chapters of the AEE, an organization dedicated to connecting clean technology companies and clusters around the country, and bringing attention to the energy technology solutions offered by these companies. In addition to the nationally covered launch, CCIA hosted an industry awards gala attended by 500 of the who’s who in Colorado’s cleantech community that was keynoted by Kevin Skillern, head of GE Energy’s Venture Capital unit.

It’s through your support of the CCIA that we have been able to accomplish all that we have this past year. CCIA is industry-led and industry-focused and we look forward to the continued growth of Colorado's cleantech cluster in 2012. We have an incredibly busy schedule ahead - classes, sector events, the annual dinner, the research awards - not to mention a busy legislative session and the addition of the AEE programs. Please keep an eye on our calendar of events - trust us, it will be a busy year! If you would like to get involved with the CCIA, please email us.