Howard Warren Buffett

Represented at the event were four federal departments, three federal agencies, entrepreneurs, state government officials, academia, private sector leaders, nonprofits and innovators.

At the conference, the United States Department of Energy and the Small Business Administration jointly announced that both the Small Business Investment Company program and the Small Business Technology Transfer program would begin using their existing funding networks to promote small green energy firms through a new $60 million Business Clean Energy Innovation Fund. The event also served as the launch vehicle for the Regional Energy Innovation Conferences.

The first Regional Energy Innovation Conference was hosted in Omaha, Nebraska on June 17, 2010. The event focused on connecting entrepreneurs and small enterprise with representatives from organizations across sectors and was itself a partnership between the City of Omaha, The Gallup Organization, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Over one hundred local, regional, and national organizations were represented at Gallup University’s Omaha Campus to discuss issues ranging from regional gap funding and human capital needs to collaboration and the early adoption of energy innovation. Read Less