Obama at MIT

Had the honor of being invited to Obama's speech at MIT today.  Thanks to the Clean Economy Network and the Renewable Energy Business Network, we were able to bring 50 local green businesspeople to the event (thanks, CEN!).  You can read the transcript here and some coverage here.

The President got a few demonstrations of technology MIT researchers are working on, before giving the speech, and then he spoke for 15 minutes or so to an auditorium full of 750 students, green entrepreneurs, researchers, cleantech investors, politicians, and other key stakeholders. 

A few points from his speech that particularly stuck out for me (paraphrasing):

• Energy tech innovators and entrepreneurs are this generation's pioneers.  Pioneers made this country great -- they expanded our boundaries, took us to the skies and to the moon.  Now energy tech pioneers are expanding our horizons in a new direction.

• There is a global race going on among countries vying to be the hubs of the next great energy technologies, and the country that wins this race will be the global economic giant of the 21st century.

• Energy is a security issue as much as it's an environmental issue.  The Department of Defense has said that reliance upon foreign oil endangers American security.

• We're going to need to use all domestic sources of energy we can find.  So we also need to find efficient ways of using our coal, oil and natural gas resources, not just solar and wind et al. 

I put up some pics on Flickr, for those interested.  It was great to see so many strong cleantech entrepreneurs and innovators in one place (fantastic networking, I might add).

Whether you're "fer" or "ag'in" the individual in your political persuasions, it was great to see someone in that high office have such a strong commitment to seeing cleantech continue to grow and thrive, and with a broad perspective on what cleantech means.