[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 161 (Wednesday, November 13, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Page S8006]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. MARKEY:
  S. 1698. A bill to provide for the establishment of clean technology 
consortia to enhance the economic, environmental, and energy security 
of the United States by promoting domestic development, manufacture, 
and deployment of clean technologies; to the Committee on Energy and 
Natural Resources.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Consortia-Led 
Energy and Advanced Manufacturing Networks Act.
  For more than a century, America's innovation community has been the 
foundation of our high-tech economy and generated broad-based growth to 
support a strong middle class. While our innovators remain the best in 
the world, we have seen a disturbing trend in recent years. When it 
comes to moving innovations out of the lab and into the factory, we are 
getting beat. Breakthroughs achieved in U.S. research universities and 
laboratories are all too often being commercialized and manufactured 
overseas. As recent research by the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology and others has demonstrated, innovation and production are 
closely related. When manufacturing facilities move overseas, we lose 
more than just those manufacturing jobs. We can lose our ability to 
continue to innovate in that industry and lose our hold on those jobs 
forever.
  At the same time, we have some industries in the United States 
dominated by deeply entrenched companies that are resistant to 
innovation or adaptation of century-old business models. In those 
sectors, we need to look at ways of partnering with our innovators on 
proof-of-concept and demonstration projects so that more breakthroughs 
can bridge the so-called ``Valley of Death'' between the lab bench and 
commercialization of a new technology. That will ensure that innovative 
and potentially disruptive technologies can actually reach the market, 
and provide badly needed competition in industries where incumbents may 
be failing to innovate. This is what my legislation is intended to 
address.
  In order to reach their full market potential, scientific 
breakthroughs must be translated into commercial applications, 
demonstrated, connected to appropriate markets, and scaled up. The bill 
I am introducing today would fertilize America's innovation ecosystems 
by making available $100 million to 6 or more consortia to support 
these types of activities and help shepherd innovations through the 
commercialization process. Consortia could include a mix of research 
universities, large and small companies, national laboratories, venture 
capital, and state and nonprofit entities with expertise in technology 
commercialization. The bill includes 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.
  We have seen the benefits of regional innovation ecosystems in places 
like Silicon Valley; Boston, Cambridge and the Route 128 Corridor; the 
Research Triangle in North Carolina; Austin, TX; and elsewhere. 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. Most 
critically when it comes to commercializing innovations, these regions 
have demonstrated a unique ability to pull investor capital off the 
sidelines and channel it into new production. We need to bolster these 
existing ecosystems and help nurture new ones.
  America's universities and research institutions are truly national 
treasures. Our venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are the sharpest 
in the world. When we sprinkle the right mix of scientific brain power 
and capitalist drive, we get something uniquely American and extremely 
potent.
  This legislation will help link inventors with investors, professors 
with producers, and get technologies out of laboratories and into 
factories. It provides the type of responsible and forward-looking 
partnership that we need with the private sector right now. This 
legislation builds on provisions I included in both the Waxman-Markey 
bill and the America COMPETES reauthorization, bills that passed the 
U.S. House of Representatives in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

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