State to Form Technology ‘Incubators’ : Environment: Program participants will receive help in entering the pollution cleanup and control business.
To support California companies in the growing pollution cleanup and control business, the state is teaming with several cities, utilities and private companies to establish three new-technology “incubators,” officials announced Thursday in Los Angeles.
James M. Strock, the state’s secretary for environmental protection, and Julie M. Wright, secretary for trade and commerce, announced the incubators and other initiatives as they were flanked by members of the California Environmental Technology Partnership, a public-private group formed by Gov. Pete Wilson last summer.
The technology centers will be low-cost business sites--stocked with everything from office machines to financial advisers--designed to help inventors and entrepreneurs set up their own companies. The first will open April 1 in San Jose. An incubator in Thousand Oaks will open in July, followed by one in Chula Vista in San Diego County by the end of the year.
Environmental services “is a sunrise industry and one at which California should excel,” Wright said.
The heyday of new environmental companies may have been the late 1980s, when industrywide growth was typically 20% annually. But California’s industry can still expect growth of 6% to 7% in 1994--well ahead of the economy as a whole, said Grant Ferrier, a San Diego consultant who is co-chairman of the California Environmental Business Council.
Ferrier estimated that environmental services companies will create 9,000 jobs this year in California, which state officials say has lost 800,000 jobs in recent years. The state’s industry records almost $20 billion a year in sales and employs nearly 200,000 people, directly and indirectly.
“It’s not the golden savior,” Ferrier said, “but it certainly is an area of growth.”
Overseas markets could hold much greater promise. Strock said California companies are positioned to do well in a potential world market worth $200 billion or more.
But the race to enter the global market has attracted many players, he noted. New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts, as well as Germany and Japan, have already announced initiatives to promote their environmental service companies.
California’s initiatives include an international conference and exposition to showcase the state’s environmental technologies and services, to be held in San Diego in May. Sacramento also plans a campaign to persuade President Clinton to locate the offices of the Border Environment Cooperation Commission and North American Development Bank--both mandated by the North American Free Trade Agreement--in San Diego.
The three incubators are intended to help small companies find capital, develop realistic business plans and commercialize their new products, Strock said. They will also help streamline permitting and other governmental processes.
