--This article originally appeared on October 22, 2009The race to green-tech supremacy is a competitive one but Michigan is making a push -- though it's a late start. Yet, despite the foot-dragging, it has a lot of weapons that other states don't -- a large, skilled workforce looking for jobs.
Excerpt:
But Detroit's transition to greener automaking is by no means
assured. U.S. battery firms are late to the race. Even if their
technology wins, there's no guarantee that Detroit would beat out
California or other states vying for supremacy.
Michigan does retain one advantage: a skilled workforce that knows a
thing or two about mass-producing cars and car parts. "Those folks are
some of the best workers the world has ever seen, and they deserve to
have jobs," says Keith Cooley, CEO of NextEnergy, a Detroit-based
nonprofit research facility and business incubator for
alternative-energy companies.
A six-minute drive from Ford Motor's original plant sits
NextEnergy's 45,000-square-foot headquarters and research labs. The
nonprofit is a key player in Michigan's efforts to reinvent the auto
industry and, by extension, itself.
NextEnergy is working with nearby Wayne State University as well as
Macomb Community College to train workers for advanced electric-drive
work via a $5 million Department of Energy grant awarded in August. The
organization has also helped state officials vet alternative-energy
companies that want to do business in Michigan, such as A123 Systems
Inc., which won $249 million in stimulus money to make battery packs
for hybrid and electric vehicles at two Michigan locations. In
September, the Watertown, Mass., company went public and saw its stock
soar 50 percent on its first trading day.
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