SAN FRANCISCO, ITALY / As Tech Week Closes, Italy in the Cleantech Spotlight

Text21 Mar As Tech Week Closes, Italy in the Cleantech Spotlight

Italy Tech Week highlighted the Italian startup pulse in Silicon Valley and brought productive dialogues to the Bay. As part of the 2013 Year of Italian Culture in the US, Italy Tech Week is one of the year’s many events that are showcasing Italianità in the Bay.

Yesterday I attended the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco and was pleased to find Italy ever relevant in the dialogue. In truth, many were surprised to hear about Italy as a Green Tech or Clean Tech nation. And they were curious to learn more.

First off, Italy has the second highest manufacturing capacity in the world in terms of output per capita, after Germany. The bel paese is also a green tech leader, riding the boom in renewables and solar energy. I reminded conference goers that Italy actually has more installed PV capacity per capita than California, America’s greenest state.

Italian companies at the Cleantech Forum San Francisco worked in PV solar, CSP solar and green chemical sectors, and featured names such as Archimede Solar Energy Srl, Beta Renewables SpA, Novamont SpA and Solergy Italia Srl. For biotech, Roberto Crea a serial entrepreneur in the biotech field who created the first synthesized human insulin.

Solergy is a photovoltaic manufacturer with offices in Rome and Oakland, CA that has created the next generation of High Concentrated Photovoltaic (HCPV) technology. At the conference, Yoav Banin, Solergy co-founder, told a listening audience, “Solergy invested in Italy because of its strength in electromechanics and high quality of engineering.”

This clean tech show comes on top of the information technology meetings of last week, where we witnessed a boom of IT startups. We must work hard in these coming months to follow up on these events and further build the bridge between San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Italy.

Italian Events in SF