Markey Introduces Bill to Create Clean Technology and Manufacturing Hubs

Press Release

It's become a familiar refrain in American commerce -- an invention created in America, invested in by Americans, gets sent overseas to be built with foreign labor. Today, Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a bill to get American inventors, investors, professors, and producers all on the same page by creating several local innovation hubs around the country that aim to bridge the last hurdles between innovation and manufacturing.

The bill -- the Consortia-Led Energy and Advanced Manufacturing Networks Act -- would create 6 or more of these hubs by encouraging local universities, clean tech businesses, investors, and experts in commercialization to link together and apply for matching federal funds. The bill would open up $100 million in matching funds, with rigorous cost-share requirements to ensure that taxpayers are only partnering on the best ideas in which the private sector also has significant capital committed.

"For more than a century, America's innovation community has been the foundation of our high-tech economy and generated broad-based growth to create jobs and support a strong middle class. This legislation will encourage a new generation of innovators and manufacturers to work together so American ideas are American-made," said Senator Markey. "This bill will help innovative and potentially disruptive technologies actually reach the market, creating jobs and providing badly needed competition in industries where incumbents may be failing to innovate."

America has already seen the benefits of regional innovation ecosystems in places like Boston, Cambridge and the Route 128 Corridor, Silicon Valley, and the Research Triangle in North Carolina. The geographic proximity of institutions in these areas improves the flow of information between scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs, and it facilitates the sharing of skilled human resources and facilities.

This legislation introduced today by Senator Markey builds on provisions he included in both the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009, and the America COMPETES reauthorization bill that passed the House of Representatives in 2010. Today, the Senate Commerce Committee, on which Senator Markey serves, is holding a hearing on the role of manufacturing hubs in driving technology innovation and creating domestic manufacturing jobs.

Source