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I just spent an amazing year at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), but have no start-ups to show for it (yet).

A year ago, I was asked by Kleiner Perkins to be the first Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at NREL. As a person who has been into energy and environmental technologies since gradeschool and as an early cleantech investor, it was an opportunity of a lifetime to become the first NREL EIR. It was a fantastic time spent with some of the best cleantech researchers in the world. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I tremendously added to my depth and breadth of cleantech history and knowledge.

The program itself was a grand experiment that I commend the Department of Energy for attempting. DOE’s calculus was that if they inserted a serial entrepreneur/investor backed by a brand-named VC firm into a lab that magic would happen and that an innovation would turn immediately into a company. At worst, DOE would learn a lot about what it and its labs need to do better to in order to accelerate ideas to market.

In the 11 months that I had the privilege to work inside NREL, I met with more than 300 researchers, identified around 30 promising technologies that I thought could reach commercial potential over the next several years, and honed in on 3 technologies that showed imminent promise. Unfortunately, the EIR program was timed too short to reach its full potential and to get the first one of these ideas set up as a company.

When building a new program into a research institution, timing is critically important. Based on my experience running the Austin Clean Energy Incubator at The University of Texas, it took almost 11 months to start my first company. In 18 months, I had helped start 5 companies. In total, these companies raised more than $200 million, but none surpassed KP’s investment hurdle.

When I agreed to become NREL’s EIR, I set the expectation with DOE, NREL, and KP that starting a company that KP would back within one year should not be expected. While there are a tremendous number of opportunities for commercialization at NREL, they need to temporally match a VC firm’s thesis, meet its perceived portfolio needs, or surpass its hurdle for innovation. Given enough time, many of the 30 technologies described above could be built into companies, but not necessarily into ones KP would fund over the period of the EIR Program.

A more reasonable expectation for all was to use this program to begin developing long-term relationships with VCs and start-ups that helped the lab and DOE develop better tools and processes. If successful, this could help NREL deliver more companies or successful collaborations for the entire industry. With this approach in mind, there were many things learned by all parties that could benefit the entire venture capital and start-up industry. Here is what I learned…

First, NREL truly is “The National Renewable Energy Lab”. There is more breadth and depth of renewable energy and energy efficiency knowledge at NREL than any other institution on the planet. This alone is worth the price of admission. Unfortunately, the admission price has never been posted and there have only been secret alley entrances with secured doors to gain access to the lab. The lesson here is that new interfaces need to be developed by the lab to better expose its collective knowledge and translate it to the marketplace more effectively (thus EIR and other programs).

Second, the value in NREL is not just in its innovation, but more importantly in the value it can deliver across the life cycle of a technology…

• Innovation – Yes, NREL has a great pool of researchers and ideas. They also have a network of other labs and universities they collaborate with (MIT, Stanford, University of Colorado, etc.). They will also soon be the hub of all DOE renewable energy intellectual property by managing DOE’s IP Portal.

• Acceleration – NREL’s experience allows them to solve critical issues for external technologies and companies. Success stories abound from NREL helping First Solar, Uni-Solar, Clipper Wind, and many others. Identifying new ways to open up NREL to solve critical issues in start-ups is critical to the VC industry.

• Analysis – NREL has a large division that does market, techno-economic, scaling, integration, policy, and plant design analysis. This primarily is developed for DOE and Congress (which really does not take advantage of this tremendous asset), but needs to be exposed to the financial services and venture capital sectors. I would encourage any thesis-driven VC firm or investment bank to review the work that has already been delivered by NREL.

• Testing / Validation – NREL provides the service of testing all flavors or renewable energy, storage, transportation, building, and energy efficiency technologies. They even integrate multiple technologies as systems and perform accelerated testing. NREL’s validation not only helps get products designed into projects, it also provides critical feedback for future development.

• Deployment – NREL has a cities and states program that helps advise on local policies, design parameters, and integrated solutions. NREL will increasingly be involved in regional test and implementation centers that will help scale technologies into cities and integrated pilot facilities.

Finally, NREL will only get better; now is the time to begin forging long-term relationships with them. With additional funding, increased DOE support, stronger linkage to national priorities, and new management focused on commercialization and market needs, NREL will deliver increasing value to the cleantech community. By becoming more intertwined with our imminent national priorities and community needs, the lab will increase its “NRELevance” in our nation’s day-to-day existence.

So, what next’s next for the NREL EIR? Over the short run, I will help deliver a national energy efficiency initiative focused on schools with the help of NREL. I will also continue supporting NREL as an entrepreneur/investor and as an advocate of the lab’s potential. I will also continue nurturing the many wonderful relationships I began forging through this program. And, yes, there will be start-ups forthcoming, unfortunately not within the short period of the EIR Program.

Thanks again to DOE, NREL, and KP for inviting me into this unique and invaluable experience. I hope that my time at NREL has made a difference there. If NREL is successful with its new management team and tools, then the entire cleantech community and nation will benefit.

Joel Serface served as NREL’s first Entrepreneur in Residence with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. As an investor and entrepreneur, Joel has planted cleantech seeds in Massachusetts, California, Texas, and now Colorado. Since 2000, Joel has started or invested into more than 20 cleantech companies with 5 liquidity events so far and has catalyzed the formation of numerous supporting cleantech institutions and regional and national policy initiatives.

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I spent two days last week overlapping the two of the least sustainable parts of the American experience – Las Vegas and NASCAR. Now I like a good Vegas juxtaposition as much as the next guy – heck, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was pretty much my sophomore year bible. But attending a clean energy exhibition in our southwest desert Gomorrah while the 8000 rpm, 500 hp travelling road show is roaring into town for the Shelby 427 – an homage to the biggest and baddest V8 engine block in the history of Detroit - is even a bit much for me to handle. .

Vegas and NASCAR are both about over the top fantasy, wanton consumerism and conspicuous consumption. Combining sound, noise, adrenaline and a hermetically closed environment keeps you from noticing that the overall sustainability of what you are involved in is somewhat akin to living in a power plant at the mouth of a Chinese coalmine.

But let’s be honest, the environmental footprint of these things is just boggling. According to NASA, Vegas is The Brightest Spot of Earth. Those lights - burning in conjunction with air conditioning more appropriate for a meat locker – illuminates people that primarily flew there from all over North America and beyond. Las Vegas’s direct carbon footprint is not as bad as it might be (as they have proudly issued press releases on), because it gets a huge percentage of its power from 70 year old Hoover dam, just down the road. But all you have to do is fly by it once at night and you’ll know that there are a lot of megawatts working extra hard just to keep the masses entranced with Celine Dion and Cirque de Soleil.

NASCAR is a lot tougher to find a silver lining in. Just to give you a sense of the ethos, NASCAR just manage to switch to unleaded fuel in 2008. NASCAR vehicles get about 4 miles to the gallon. What that means is the racers who finished the good old Shelby 427 each emitted about a ton of CO2 in their wake. In about three hours. I’m far from a carbon saint, but it takes me some 3-4 months of driving to put a ton up in the atmosphere (my flying habit is a different story). At the average NASCAR race, a huge percentage of the fans drive long distances to get there – generally driving big American trucks and house-on-wheels American RV’s. It’s no coincidence that when Toyota finally decided to make a full size trucks for the American market, the first thing they did was get themselves a real NASCAR team

No, this blog is not going down the sackcloth and ashes. The reality is that it’s going to take some time, effort and thinking to get homo americanus to stop taking energy, fossil fuels and the atmosphere completely for granted. People LIKE the stuff of Vegas and NASCAR - just as they liked smoking, driving without seatbelts and the purr of an engine running on full leaded gasoline. Heck, it’s not my thing, but I could feel myself falling into the indulgent trance walking the casino floor . So, just hoping that people learn to turn the lights off and install low flow showerheads a fool’s hope - a changeover has to be driven by some innovative thinking, some policy nuance and the liberal use of the bully pulpit. And then competition and, ergo, markets.

Which is where Vegas and NASCAR can become part of the solution, rather than the problem. Everybody who has ever seen a Hong Kong martial arts film - or opened a fortune cookie - knows that the Chinese symbol for danger is also that for opportunity. President Obama talks about infrastructure investing and technology development as keystones to resuming long-term prosperity. And therein lays the rub – what BETTER place to attack the US’s incorrigibly wasteful ways than these dual beating hearts of self-indulgent capitalism. Let’s be honest with ourselves – is another happy initiative from holier-than-thou bastions of Boulder, Berkeley or Austin or going create anything more replicable than another soy ink, recycled paper, press release?

And frankly, in regard to NASCAR at least, the Government has the upper hand. Remember, the American taxpayer pretty much owns the US auto industry these days. And let’s not forget that auto racing began as a way to demonstrate technology. Around the turn of the century when the Indy 500 was in its early years, gasoline was just one of a couple technology options out there - electric, diesels and even exothermic Stirling engines all wanted a piece of the pie - to be the transport technology of choice. Things like Indy showed the nascent consumer that these newfangled cars were safe, efficient and reliable.

So, as we hit the next inflection point in auto technology, how about President Obama sending his car emissary (reputedly Steve Rattner, ex-Quadrangle Group) go on down to the France (family) NASCAR empire, point out quite correctly that the entire petro-advertising complex they live on is at the end of its era and come up with a set of new rules for 2010 that will start the process of moving to hybrids, electrics, mixed fuels, etc. Give every team the energy equivalent of 25 gallons of gas (I’m flexible on the numbers – maybe ratchet down over a couple years) to go five hundred miles at speed and see how innovation blooms. Teslas, Chevy Volts, Fiskers, souped-up Prius’ – let a thousand flowers bloom under the hot lights of Talladega and Daytona. There will still be plenty of speed - my hybrid goes 0-60 in about 5 seconds and I don’t even have the tires quite inflated right. Put the car companies and the pit crew wizards on the task and I’ll guarantee you we’ll push clean transport innovation faster. And instead of being a Ford or Chevy fan, you can go with electric, hydrogen or hybrid. OK, maybe that’s pushing it a bit.

Vegas is all about light and action – and casino’s competing with each other for the best show, the hottest entertainer, the coolest restaurant. What a laboratory for mass energy efficiency, especially in lighting - a place to bring in LEDs en masse. We’re on the cusp of a global revolution in lighting – how about finding a policy structure to have all the casino’s compete to show who can do most with the least. Most Vegas casinos don’t even have the standard European or Asian system where you need a room key card to turn on the lights. The spectacles around the Wynn, Mirage, Bellagio and Venetian – just to name a few – are all energy hogs of extraordinary degree. They’ve gotten away with it to date, because it hasn’t mattered – to their bottom lines, to their engagement with customers and in their relationships to policy and the government. But that’s all changing quickly.

The potential is just beyond enormous – and as tight and focused a target market as you’ll find anywhere on the planet. Eighteen of the world’s twenty five largest hotels (by room count) are on the Las Vegas Strip, with a total of over 67,000 rooms without having to even make a single turn off Las Vegas Boulevard. For the city, imagine the follow-on effects of becoming the center for hotel/resort energy efficiency expertise.

People don’t necessarily want to change their ways of life and the way they get entertainment – at least not too much and not too fast. People will still want to see racing and they still will want to be dazzled by the distractions of a place like Vegas. But that doesn’t mean that we just sit in the stasis of the past – if we can create the excitement and verve of these kinds of experiences, but with a fraction the energy signature – well, that can’t be a bad thing. And if that occurs – well, to paraphrase the famous saying – hopefully what happens in Vegas won’t just stay in Vegas.

Marc Stuart is the Co-Founder and Director of New Business Development for EcoSecurities, a global carbon trading firm. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily represent the view of EcoSecurities.

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By Guest Columnist Sonia Medina, US Country Manager, Ecosecurities

At 24, a recent graduate from Oxford, I thought the idea of joining a tiny consultancy firm doing carbon reduction projects was something very cool. At the time, I did not mind that I had to cycle 5 miles across town to work at a country house in the outskirts of Oxford. That did not have heating during the winter. Not the kind of job expectation one may have when you have graduated from a so-called good university. But five years later, I have travelled a million miles, visited more than 50 countries across five continents, negotiated contracts to build a portfolio of hundreds of carbon-abatement projects and spent an enormous amount of time learning about other cultures. What a ride!

After that fantastic experience, I thought that the next frontier for climate change is the sleeping giant of the United States and I found myself buying a one-way ticket to JFK to ‘try to figure out how to make it here’ as the new US Country Director for that same firm I joined five years ago (and which now has nearly 300 employees, plus heating). In my first three months, it already feels like going back to that small cold country house in Oxford when it comes to the debates about the science of climate change or the rationale of a carbon market that I hear in NY, DC and Sacramento, but with a twist – I have to facebook people the information about my company – something people in the developing world prefer to do over a beer, rice wine or green tea!
Four years ago, our work really picked up when the Kyoto Protocol was finally ratified by Russia, after years of back and forth. It was almost an anti-climax when they finally decided to go ahead after so much playing around. I guess Putin has always like intrigue games from his days at KGB. It was at that point when the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – a project-based mechanism to generate offsets regulated by the United Nations and part of the Kyoto Protocol – found itself flooded with real demand.

Most of my work these five years has been in building a portfolio of CDM projects worldwide ranging from landfills in Latin America and biomass-to-energy projects in India to industrial energy efficiency in South Africa and China, to name a few. During that time, my relationship with CDM has been of love and hate. There have been days that I thought it was the most fantastic mechanism of the world, that allows people to align themselves to do good, channels foreign investment to clean projects in the developing world and truly promotes sustainable development. Other days I’m convinced that the bureaucracy that the UN has built around the system will make it collapse under its own weight, and I put my hands up in desperation and I think. ”we will never go anywhere!”

But to be fair, even though the process to get an offset certified through the UN system can be onerous, it is also true that the mechanism does preserve environmental integrity, has helped built enormous awareness around the issue of climate change across continents, has created a pipeline of over 4,000 projects across five continents and has issued over 250 million of high-quality offsets in the last three years. Accomplishments other carbon standards cannot even dream of.

That is why knowing the good and the bad on the CDM, it is quite shocking that policy-makers and industry groups in the US totally ignore the work done and lessons learned from this incredible period of growth. It’s especially ironic when funnily enough, the CDM was actually created by the Clinton Administration back in 1997 when negotiating Kyoto. It is important that knowledge builds rapidly because there is no time to reinvent the wheel. When the Obama administration enacts a cap and trade bill, industry groups know very well that environmentally sound offsets are a key price control mechanism. The US could do a double-service to the world and to itself by fixing the procedural issues of the CDM, and adopting an already-created high-quality pipeline of projects seeking to make real emission reductions.

Next Week: The rights and wrongs of CDM criticisms and why knowing the difference should matter to the US