Renewable Energy Trust Moves to Clean Energy Center

Wade Roush11/25/09

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed legislation this week that gives the Renewable Energy Trust, formerly a unit of the quasi-public Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a new home: the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. The Renewable Energy Trust—an investment fund that comes from surcharge on Massachusetts electrical consumers of about $6 per ratepayer per year—supports a range of alternative energy projects, while the Clean Energy Center, the energy sector’s complement to the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, is charged with supporting R&D, entrepreneurship, and workforce training in the cleantech industries. The bill that created the center in 2008 specified that it would be funded in party by reallocating Renewable Energy Trust revenues, as Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs explained in an interview with Xconomy this week. “This legislation merges the work of two quasi-public state entities with complementary missions, consolidating staff and resources while establishing the Clean Energy Center as the primary agency responsible for growing the Massachusetts clean energy industry,” Governor Patrick said in a statement released today.

Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/wroush.