Why Cleantech in Atlanta?

And why now?

“Huh?”

That’s the reaction that a few of my friends had when I told them about the new Cleantech Accelerator that Cox + gener8tor just launched in Atlanta.

My friends’ second reaction is typically some snarky comment about the land of Suburbans being a hotbed for sustainability.

I was also a little confused when I first talked to some of the people behind the Georgia Cleantech Innovation Hub years ago. First, why Cleantech? Isn't that already done? And more importantly, why Atlanta?

First, obviously Cleantech isn't something new—clean environmental technology & clean energy go back decades (FirstSolar & SunPower go back to the 1980s and 90s, respectively). The idea of a “Cleantech” industry really took off though in the early-2000s as the cost of solar technologies started to come down dramatically and a wave of venture investment followed. This first wave gave us companies like Tesla, Bloom Energy & others.

Although the “Cleantech” market (depending on how you define it) today is well north of $200B, there’s still a ton of areas for innovation & growth. From energy storage to EV infrastructure to carbon capture & storage (CCS), there’s a tremendous need for new technologies, new approaches and new companies to meet the challenge. Federal and state-level policies are finally aligning with sustainability concerns, companies are looking for new innovations to improve their sustainability & input costs are falling, making these innovations competitive in the market — all wind at the back of this generation of Cleantech startups.

But why Atlanta?

I’ll admit I was skeptical when I first heard that a local group was trying to establish a clean tech center in town. After all, there’s a lot of potentially transformative industries—space mining, nanotechnology, humanoid robotics, quantum computing—where Atlanta doesn’t have a footprint either and arguably should invest resources. Are we too late and trying to build from scratch?

So I did my homework, and there’s a lot more here than I thought.

Cleantech in Georgia is huge—over $11.5B has been invested in Georgia, just since 2018 alone. This includes Rivian’s planned $5B+ new electric vehicle plant (paused but still planned), Hyundai’s EV and battery plants, SK Battery’s battery plant and Ascend Element’s first commercial-scale battery recycling facility.

Beneath the headlines, there’s also action:

• Georgia is #7 in solar energy production

• Atlanta is #11 for amount of green office space

• The Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute is one of the largest of its kind

The Kendeda building, on the Georgia Tech campus, is the first building in Georgia (and only the 28th globally!)  to earn Living Building Challenge (LBC) certification, the world’s most ambitious and holistic green building achievement. The building produces more power and water over a year than it consumes, and incorporated so much recycled material that its creation diverted more landfill waste than it created. (Credit: Kendeda Building)

Couple that with four major research universities in metro Atlanta—including Georgia Tech, which ranks in the top 3 nationally in almost every engineering discipline—and there’s clearly more going on here in cleantech just beneath the surface.

That’s why the new Cleantech Accelerator is so exciting—it has the potential to cement Atlanta—and Georgia’s—role in the cleantech ecosystem by spinning out dozens of new cleantech startups into the local community that will be the leaders of the next generation.

It also could evolve into the central hub around which all things cleantech & sustainability related orbit. That sort of focus would turbocharge the local ecosystem, creating a powerhouse sector that will help drive Atlanta’s growth for decades to come.