The Swedes are coming!
Posted on April 10th, 2008 – 5:33 PMBy Thomas Lee
You got to hand it to those Swedes and I’m not talking about Ikea or meatballs. When it comes to green technology, Sweden makes the entire United States look like downtown Beijing. A global leader in renewable energy, Sweden today supplies 26 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources.
So maybe some of that Swedish ingenuity could rub off on us. At least that’s what the BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota hopes. The group recently announced Minnesota, along with Georgia and New York, will host the newly formed International Renewable Energy Technology Institute.
According to the press release: “The goal of the institute is to encourage the exchange of ideas and technologies in renewable energy and energy efficiency from Sweden into the United States. Efforts will focus on implementing technologies already available and breakthroughs likely to occur within the next two to three years.”
One of the more interesting parts of this institute is its structure. In addition to an academic entity housed at Minnesota State University in Mankato, the institute also boasts a for-profit entity that will help commercialize the technology and research to come out of this partnership.
Melissa Kjolsing, a spokeswoman for the BioBusiness Alliance, said details are still being worked out but a yet-to-be named Swedish company “will identify, qualify, and support various U.S. companies to enable successful partnership with Swedish-based companies to positively affect successful technology transfer resulting in product manufacturing, licensing, or distribution opportunities.”
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