From Green Plus ...
In its annual Green Plus North American Sustainable Enterprise Awards, the Institute for Sustainable Development recognized The Clean Tech Center for its leadership efforts to help the nation, region, and its members understand and benefit from the relationship between economic competitiveness and sustainable business practices.
2010 Green Plus national co-winners included The Clean Tech Center, a Syracuse based clean energy business incubator, which is catalyzing economic development in the central upstate region of NYS and The Greater Cleveland Partnership / Council on Smaller Enterprises which is helping its members become more sustainable.
The CenterState Syracuse Chamber of Commerce and The Clean Tech Center are at the core of organizing a regional innovation cluster that has gained international recognition for its efforts to build a comprehensive and connected infrastructure to support the development of renewable and clean energy companies, and help existing companies advance energy and climate change initiatives to support sustainability. They were instrumental in organizing a nearly 200 member “green” consortium of education, industry, government, investor and small business leaders to develop a regional strategy around green innovation, and worked with the New York State Energy Research Development Authority to create The Clean Tech Center at The Tech Garden — a clean energy incubator to accelerate the launch of renewable energy businesses and technologies.
In addition, The Clean Tech Center hosts a regular calendar of “Green Business Development” Days for members, in partnership with the NYS Small Business Development Center and the U.S. Small Business Administration. More than 100 companies have already been served in the first year of the program. The Chamber hosts an annual Green Business Showcase, which is the largest event of its kind in the northeast, with more than 7,000 annual attendees, and this year also launched a student “Green Innovation Exposition” to engage young entrepreneurs in idea formation around green business concepts. Finally, the Chamber is an active partner with New York State policy makers and has had a hand in helping to shape some of the most ambitious statewide clean energy programs and sustainability goals in the nation.
The Clean Tech Center’s blog/news site: www.cleantechny.blogspot.com has become one of the most widely consulted central clearinghouses of information on sustainability news and issues in New York State – with readers in more than 60 countries. The Chamber’s efforts were recently recognized by Sustainable World Capital in the Cleantech Group’s February 2010 report for creating one of the “top ten clean tech cluster organizations in the world.” According to an independent study by the Battelle Group, there are more than 400 clean tech businesses, employing more than 10,000, in the region – evidence of strategic growth in this sector.
About The Green Plus North American Sustainable Enterprise Awards / Green Plus Chamber of the Year Awards: The field of chambers considered for the prize was formed by considering the work of Partners for Livable Communities — a non-profit leadership organization working to improve the livability of communities by promoting quality of life, economic development, and social equity. Since its founding in 1977, Partners has helped communities set a common vision for the future, discover and use new resources for community and economic development, and build public/private coalitions to further their goals. Recently, PLC published its second volume of case studies of best practices among chambers of commerce in sustainability leadership, “The Dollars and Sense of Business: Chambers of Commerce as the New Champions of a Green Economy“.
The mission of the Institute for Sustainable Development is to democratize triple bottom line sustainability by making it accessible to smaller employers and their communities, fostering a new generation of sustainability leaders, and developing a common understanding of sustainability principles across cultures. Green Plus is the Institute’s program to provide affordable education, networking, and recognition to smaller enterprises interested in pursuing triple bottom line sustainability practices in People, Planet and Performance. Through Green Plus, the Institute offers online and in-person small business education through its Sustainability Fellows, a national business-to-business network for mentorship and business opportunities, and brand support for those businesses that earn Certified Green Plus status.
The Institute partners with the American Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE) as the key channel to market to offer Green Plus to regional chambers of commerce. ACCE’s mission is to support and develop chamber professionals to lead businesses and their communities. The organizational vision is that ACCE is the organization of choice for chamber professionals. ACCE currently has over 7,800 professional members in 1,400 chambers of commerce, which in turn represent over 1.2 million small business members. These professionals represent local, regional, and state chambers of commerce of all sizes across the United States and Canada.
