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Innovation Heritage and Collaborative Spirit Set Indiana Apart in Energy
By: Paul Mitchell - President & CEO, Energy Systems Network
Category: Energy
Recently, officials from the Obama administration fanned out across the country to announce $2.4 billion in federal stimulus grants aimed at accelerating the U.S. advanced battery and electric vehicle component industries. President Obama reserved his visit for Elkhart County in northern Indiana, highlighting $416 million in grants to Hoosier companies and universities focused on getting more advanced hybrid and plug-in vehicles on our highways.
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The fact that Indiana was the second-largest recipient of funds from this pot of federal stimulus money was no accident; Tuesday’s announcement was rooted in a long heritage of automotive and energy innovation that continues to spawn new partnerships and opportunities.
Hoosiers were the first to put a battery in a car, pioneer the development of hybrid technology, and engineer the first electric car – the GM EV1 – later made infamous in the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?”
But it’s not our long list of historical automotive milestones that is important, but rather the massive pool of engineering and manufacturing talent that remained in Indiana through the good time and bad as a legacy of this work. Walk into any engineering lab at Delphi, Allison, Remy, or upstarts EnerDel and Bright Automotive and ask how many of a given group of employees worked on GM’s EV1 project and as many as half will raise their hands.
Federal grants can be won and lost, tax incentives can be offered and withdrawn – but in today’s economy, human capital is the strongest driver of income growth and economic output, and the kind of expertise in automotive engineering that Indiana has takes generations to build. So while GM’s decision to crush their electric dreams is considered by many a symbol of Detroit’s lack of vision, Indiana’s decision to leverage the brainpower that made the electric car a reality is a competitive advantage that can never be scrapped.
The historical connections shared by many of Indiana’s hybrid vehicle pioneers dating back to their shared General Motors heritage has also helped sustain a unique spirit of collaboration within the state’s cleantech industry – a spirit that we’re capitalizing on to broker new commercialization partnerships through the Energy Systems Network initiative. It is this growing spirit of collaboration, not the injection of much needed federal grants, which will secure our position as a center of energy innovation.
Today, many places are scrambling to position themselves as the ‘Silicon Valley’ for electric vehicles. It’s similar to 2002, when more than 35 other states and regions boasted organized life sciences initiatives when the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership launched BioCrossroads. Indiana was set apart then by a committed group of leading companies and research institutions willing to work together, and this effort has helped the state carve out a lucrative niche as a life sciences leader.
It’s an instructive lesson for our clean technologies industry. Indiana has real and significant assets in the cleantech sector – Tuesday’s announcement represents a vote of confidence in the strength of these firms, and their participation in the Energy Systems Network shows their willingness to collaborate. It adds up to a bright future ahead for energy innovation in Indiana.
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