The Northwest Cleantech Innovation Network (NWCIN) is a collaboration across VertueLab, CleanTech Alliance, and the University of Washington’s Washington Clean Energy Testbeds focused on providing comprehensive regional support to commercialize early stage cleantech startups in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, and Western Canada. In October 2020, VertueLab and CleanTech Alliance were awarded $50,000 through the Office of Technology Transitions’ (OTT) Energy Program for Innovation Clusters (EPIC) program to expand a program called the Cascadia CleanTech Accelerator (see our initial conversation with the team here). In 2021, VertueLab in conjunction with CleanTech Alliance and the Testbeds received nearly $1 million to expand on their initial work and build out a regional consortium of services that make up NWCIN: the initial Cascadia Cleantech Accelerator, a Federal Funding Assistance program, Lab2Launch, and a Cleantech Hardware Innovation Prototyping (CHIP) program. To date, NWCIN has supported 36 companies, helping them create over 140 jobs, develop 44 prototypes, execute 33 demonstration projects, secure 9 patents and file an additional 17 patent applications.

We connected with Leon Wolf (LW), the Director of the Federal Funding Assistance Program at VertueLab, Michael Pomfret (MP), the Managing Director of the Testbeds, Rachelle Ames (RA), the VP of Economic Development at the CleanTech Alliance, and Abigail Hagan (AH) Project and Operations Manager at VertueLab, about how the EPIC funding has allowed the Northwest Cleantech Innovation Network to provide programming for all types of cleantech startups.