Lead Sponsors: Senator Jamie Eldridge & Representative Frank Smizik

Summary: This bill would create an Office of Clean Technology within the Executive Office of Economic Development, which will be charged with increasing the competitiveness of Massachusetts’ clean technologies industry. The bill will also create a Clean Tech Advisory Commission to help the Office of Clean Technology achieve and implement its goals.

Why This Matters: Massachusetts is known throughout the world as a center of innovation in high tech, life sciences, and information technology. As a result, we have an opportunity to develop a Clean Tech economy that will lead the worldwide transition to a cleaner, healthier economy.

Clean Technologies (Clean Tech) are products, services, and production processes that greatly reduce or eliminate environmental and health impacts throughout a product’s lifecycle, from mining to manufacturing to product use and disposal, while maintaining the same or better levels of quality.

The Office of Clean Technology (OCT) will be the principal agency of state government focused on increasing clean tech sector jobs, clean tech sector businesses, and clean tech research and development by leveraging Massachusetts current resources and strengths to support a shift to a clean tech economy.

What this Bill Would Do: The bill will create the Office of Clean Technology (OCT) under the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, along with a Commission on Clean Technology, with the goal of achieving a 25 percent increase from 2010 levels in clean technology sector jobs, businesses and research in the Commonwealth by 2020.

The OCT will be the principal agency of the government charged with increasing the competitiveness of Massachusetts’ clean technologies industry by identifying and encouraging efforts to expand the Commonwealth’s clean technological resources, and by promoting new and emerging clean technologies for all sectors of the Massachusetts economy.

The Commission on Clean Technology will be created to help the Office of Clean Technology achieve and implement its goals. The Commission shall be responsible for developing, revising and creating a five-year implementation plan to guide the Clean Tech Initiative for the OCT.