AERTC Chairman: Work Harder, Smarter, Faster for Clean Energy Development

The chairman of Stony Brook University's Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center has called for a more potent combination of collaboration, innovation, and informed public policy to help get the U.S. back on track as a leader in the renewable and sustainable energy movement.

Robert Catell, appearing as the keynote speaker on Wednesday at the Hauppauge Industrial Association's Go Green Environmental and Energy Conference in Melville, said leaders in government, academia, and business need to work together for that goal.

"In my opinion, we have never really had a sustainable energy policy, and that's what we need going forward," Catell said.

When you look at the big picture of the past century, he said, there hasn't been much in the way of true, homegrown energy innovation, which has allowed countries like China and Germany to take the lead.

"We're going to have to work a lot smarter and also work together," Catell said. "To me that means we have to work to create much better, capable tools...We need more technology innovation than we have seen in the last century. When you think of it, there really haven't been that many changes in that time."

The AERTC itself is likely to be a big part of that movement. Catell described the center's mission as innovative energy research with a focus on efficiency and conservation. The building itself, which AERTC consultant Jack Kramer said is 99 percent complete and should be open by springtime, will be certified LEED platinum by the U.S. Green Building Council, the first building in New York State to receive such a certification.

Catell also said New York, and Long Island in particular, has the right combination of resources to grow itself as a geographical leader in the industry. However, he said the region will need more college graduates in math and science in order to do it. Currently, he said, only 10 percent of local college students go into those disciplines.

"Our future is really in educating our children in math and science," he said. "We'd like to see New York at the forefront of the clean tech revolution."