I went to the California Clean Tech Open (CCTO) 2008 Launch event in San Jose. It was held at the City Hall Rotunda, which is a a pretty cool building right next to the City Hall tower. There were exhibits around the floor from past CCTO teams as well as some sponsors. Outside the hall there were some hybrid and electric vehicles from Lexus and PG&E. The host for the evening was Marc Gottschalk, one of the founders of the CCTO. Marc recapped the CCTO from the past two years and talked a bit about changes for 2008.

One of the guest speakers was San Jose’s mayor, Chuck Reed. He discussed the city’s “Green Vision” which is a 15 year, 10 point plan for the city.  Some key point he mentioned are to create 25,000 clean tech jobs, reduce per capita energy use by 50%, and receive 100% of our electrical power from clean renewable sources. The mayor also challenged the solar industry to come up with a way to deliver residential solar energy at zero cost to the end consumer.

Another guest speaker was David Rodgers of the Department of Energy. One of his key points was the effort by the CCTO and the DoE to duplicate the CCTO in other regions across the country. Marc mentioned that requests have come in for help establishing similar competitions all over the world. It would be nice to see this focus on clean tech start-ups gain some serious momentum.