Title: MA Clean Energy Census

Industry sector: Biofuels, Finance, Law

Highlights
• Jobs: Massachusetts’ clean energy cluster supports
14,400 jobs and is poised to be 10th largest cluster in
the state.
• Growth Rate: Surveyed executives expect 30% job
growth in renewable energy firms and 25% for energy
efficiency firms over the next year. Weighting by
existing employment, growth is still predicted to be
20%. This would be more than 3 times greater than the
next fastest growing cluster in the state grew over the
past year.
• Fastest Growing Sector: Renewable energy
companies are the youngest and fastest growing firms.
• Largest Job Sector: Energy efficiency and demand
response firms supply almost 6,300 jobs, or 44% of the
total 14,400 jobs.
• Company Size: Massachusetts is an incubator for
clean energy firms, with 68% of the firms operating
below $10 million in annual revenues, and 41% below
$1 million.
• State Competitor: Surveyed companies rate
California as the most supportive region for building a
clean energy cluster.
• Survey Size: 302 entities (companies, government
agencies, and university research centers) responded to
the census survey.
• Jobs Database Size: 556 entities, including the 302
that responded to the survey, were included in the jobs
estimate.
Innovation and Incubation in
Massachusetts
Massachusetts has a growing, diverse group of start-up
companies coalescing with long-established companies
into a clean energy technology and services industry. With
14,400 people employed in the sector, Massachusetts has a
starting critical mass of technology developers,
entrepreneurs, investors, and service specialists. These
highly skilled and educated people operate within four
industry sub-segments:
• Renewable Energy. There are two categories of
renewable energy entities: 1) companies that develop
new renewable energy technologies, such as more
efficient solar panels, and 2) companies that design,
engineer, finance, and/or construct renewable energy
systems. Renewable energy technologies include solar
photovoltaic systems, solar-assisted fuel cells, bioenergy
fuels, wind power, and wave systems. (This
report includes all fuel companies in the renewable
energy part of the cluster, even though fuel cells may
be powered by sources like natural gas that are not
renewable.)
• Energy Efficiency / Demand Response. Energy
efficiency companies develop, manufacture, or install
systems that cut energy waste, such as light-emitting
diode (LED) lighting, building controls, and energyefficient
appliances and machinery. Companies in this
category include Color Kinetics and Ember. Demand
response companies develop and/or install controls to
help consumers cut peak power demand. Companies
include EnerNOC and Ambient Corporation.
• Consulting and Support. Support companies provide
services across all industries. This survey includes
only firms and jobs with identified clean energy staff.
Support companies provide legal, financial, and
consulting services. Financial services include angel
investors and venture capital firms.
• University Research Centers. Universities and
private laboratories drive innovation, fueling the next
generation of new companies. This survey includes
only staff identified with clean energy research and
development. In Massachusetts, research centers
include such specialties as fuel cell, wind power, solar,
and wave power research.
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Sector Is Booming
With a 15% compound annual growth rate in new
company formations since 1995, the clean energy sector
has been booming. The boom is leading company
executives to forecast hiring more employees, with a
predicted average annual employee growth rate ranging
from 11% for universities to 30% for renewable energy
companies. This growth rate is a function of the high
weighting of very small start-up companies—comprising 1
to 5 employees—that normally have high growth rates.
Weighted by existing employees, the growth rate is still a
robust 20%.
In Massachusetts, start-up ventures are created or assisted
by:
• Company spin-outs from universities, such as the
University of Massachusetts, MIT, Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, and Boston University, as well
as private laboratories, such as TIAX and Draper Labs.
Such spin-out companies include Konarka, Solasta,
MTPV, and Lilliputian Systems.
• The Renewable Portfolio Standard, which provides a
market and revenue stream for renewable energy
project developers. Projects built in recent years have
included landfill gas, biomass, and wind
developments.
• Talented people who started new companies after their
employers, such as Polaroid and Schott Solar,
implemented involuntary staff reductions. Nanoptek is
one such start-up company.
• Market solicitations for demand response offered by
New England’s electricity grid operator, ISO New
England. In addition, ISO New England’s new forward
capacity market will encourage capacity investments
in renewable energy projects and demand response.
• Programs offered by the Massachusetts Technology
Collaborative such as the Green Schools Initiative, the
SEED Initiative, the Large Onsite Renewables
Initiative, and the Massachusetts Green Power
Partnership. Companies that have benefited from these
programs include Nuvera Fuel Cells, Acumentrics,
Konarka, Zapotec Energy, CommonWealth Resource
Management, Agrivida, and Ze-gen. Early investments
by MTC helped Evergreen Solar to thrive, leading to
the recently announced plan for their $150 million
expansion in Massachusetts, also partially funded by
MTC.