Ten years ago, Jaylen Brown won a FIBA Americas Championship gold medal as part of the USA Basketball Men’s U18 National Team.
Ten years ago, the Commonwealth was seven years into the Patrick Administration’s historic Massachusetts Life Sciences Initiative—a $1 billion investment over 10 years aimed at strengthening the state’s life sciences sector. Spoiler alert: it worked!
Ten years ago, thanks to then-Mayor Joseph Curtatone’s support and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Greentown Labs was settling into its new 33,000 sq. ft. home in Somerville, MA that was previously an abandoned, unfinished manufacturing space ripe for innovation. Its budding community of 25 early-stage companies was focused on solving the world’s biggest energy and environmental challenges.
A lot can happen in a decade.
Brown and the Cs are one win away from claiming the franchise’s 18th championship and securing the title of the most championships in NBA history.
Greater Boston, specifically Cambridge, is well regarded as the global hub for life science innovation, research and development, and talent—not to mention the many pharmaceutical and biotech companies headquartered here. Organizations like MassBio and Massachusetts Biotechnology Council have played a key role in convening and connecting the ecosystem too.
Greentown now spans a 100,000 sq. ft. campus that offers prototyping and wet lab space, shared office space, a machine shop, electronics lab, tool shops, software and business resources, and a large network of corporate partners, investors, and more. It has supported more than 500 early-stage startups that have collectively created more than 11,000 jobs and raised more than $5.7 billion in funding. Nearly 90 percent of these startups are still in business today, and lucky for us, many of them have chosen to stay in Massachusetts after they’ve outgrown the incubator despite growing competition from other states.
Greentown is internationally recognized as a leader in early-stage startup incubation and proclaimed its focus on climatetech innovation, entrepreneurship, and partnership in 2020. The incubator defines climatetech as solutions that mitigate the impacts of climate change by capturing or reducing greenhouse gas emissions and build more resilient communities. While Greentown has not expanded internationally, it opened a second location in Houston, TX in 2021 to help accelerate the energy transition.
Over the past decade, Massachusetts has born some of the most impressive, breakthrough climatetech solutions yet to be developed. Companies like Form Energy, which is commercializing a new class of ultra-low-cost, long-duration iron-air batteries to enable a 100 percent renewable energy grid; Sublime Systems, which is decarbonizing cement-making; LineVision, which is improving the reliability, capacity, and safety of electricity transmission lines; and SparkCharge, which is enabling widespread electric vehicle adoption with its ultra-fast, portable, and modular charging station for EVs. These are just a sampling of the companies Greentown has had the privilege of supporting through their growth, development, and deployment.
Now, as we collectively look at the next decade of impact for Massachusetts, we’re on the precipice of greatness.
Tonight could (and should!) go down in the record books for our beloved home team.
On the heels of a successful inaugural ClimaTech Conference buoyed by the Healey-Driscoll Administration, the House Ways and Means Committee is considering the Mass Leads Act—Gov. Healey’s ambitious $1 billion, 10-year economic development bond bill. This could, and very well should, go down in history as well.
The Mass Leads Act will strengthen Massachusetts’ long-standing position as a global leader in life sciences, and it will shout to the rest of the world that Massachusetts is equally committed to climatetech innovation and capitalizing on the enormous economic opportunity it presents for all.
Is it a big investment? Yes, absolutely.
Can we afford it? Bigger, existential question: can we afford not to? For the sake of our kids and the planet, probably not.
Let’s not overlook that this is an investment in one of our state’s leading industries, our next generation’s future, and our long-term economic competitiveness. A recent UMass Amherst report highlighted that if the bill were passed as written, it could deliver 12 to 1 return on investment. Equally important, it will help us achieve our ambitious climate goals, too.
A wise friend in the ecosystem recently said to me, “when there’s a will, there’s a way.” I believe Massachusetts will find a way. Just imagine what an article 10 years from now could say to celebrate our collective climatetech leadership.
So here’s to the Cs. Here’s to Title Town. And here’s to continuing to catalyze the climatetech revolution right here in the Commonwealth. LFG!
Julia Travaglini is Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Greentown Labs.