New Market and Policy Solutions Center, CalCEF Innovations, Targets Cleantech Bottlenecks.

3Com Ventures Veteran, Berkeley Industry Fellow Joins as Managing Director

SAN FRANCISCO -- Today CalCEF Innovations, the market and policy solutions division of the California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF), announced that Paul Frankel has joined as Managing Director. Frankel, a veteran of 3Com Ventures, former Stanford and Haas adjunct professor and former fundraising chair of California Clean Tech Open will take the lead on the organization's goal of providing action-oriented finance and policy solutions to the expanding cleantech industry.

Targeting the next set of challenges facing the global cleantech industry, CalCEF Innovations builds on CalCEF's work to identify and address critical challenges in policy, technology and finance that threaten to impede the growth of the young cleantech industry. As capital continues to flow into the cleantech sector, CalCEF Innovations is examining emerging bottleneck issues, ranging from large-scale transmission for renewable resources, to the behavioral challenges impeding energy efficiency, to technical and policy hurdles facing electricity storage, to uneven public policies that are limiting the U.S.'s competitiveness in this increasingly global industry.

"CalCEF Innovations was created to bring the drivers of the cleantech category - technologists, financiers, entrepreneurs and policymakers - to the table to discuss, discover and more importantly test, pilot and deploy solutions to the challenges that have not received enough support or attention," said Paul Frankel, Managing Director of CalCEF Innovations.

Well-versed in identifying and capitalizing on early market opportunities, Frankel was a key figure in the birth of the wireless local area networking (WLAN) industry, helping to spearhead the industry's pivotal 802.11 standard as co-founder and vice-chairman of the influential Wi-Fi Alliance. Frankel turned his attention to cleantech in mid-2002. His research study on the sector was published and announced at the First European Hydrogen Energy Conference in 2003 Identifying a key gap in the emerging cleantech finance industry, Frankel then went on to found the mezzanine debt fund Ecosa Capital, targeting expansion stage companies in clean energy, green building and sustainable agriculture. Frankel continues to be a trailblazer behind new, interdisciplinary curricula at Stanford University and UC Berkeley on the topics of cleantech innovation, commercialization, and entrepreneurship.

"Paul is the rare combination of entrepreneur, strategic thinker and intellectual leader that is precisely what the cleantech industry needs now," said Dan Adler, president of CalCEF. "Paul has been at the forefront of the clean energy effort in California, from both the start-up side with his work on the California Clean Tech Open and financially with Ecosa Capital, and has helped to educate some of the brightest young minds in the industry. He will be an invaluable addition to the innovative CalCEF team as we continue to identify and deliver what clean technology needs to grow and thrive."

"CalCEF Innovations advances the mission of the California Clean Energy Fund to aggressively target key issues that cut across industries, pose challenges to policy and impede the flow of capital into climate solutions," said Michael Peevey, Chairman of CalCEF Innovations and President of the California Public Utilities Commission. "The cleantech industry is at an inflection point, where rapid scaling is the challenge and new strategies must be developed to put our economy on a sustainable path. Paul Frankel is a proven leader with the right skills to develop the solutions that will get us there."

About CalCEF Innovations

The mission of CalCEF Innovations is to address issues impacting the long-run transformation of the energy system towards sustainability, including the formation of enterprises, the continued flow of capital into technologies and infrastructure, and the design of markets and policy strategies for the sustainable energy transition. CalCEF Innovations leads the California Clean Energy Fund's development of novel finance, policy, and technology mechanisms to accelerate the growth of clean energy markets through a variety of programs and activities. These include our Entrepreneurs-in-Residence program developing solutions to key market and policy issues, academic and industry affiliates such as the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center, the California Clean Tech Open Alumni Program, and our innovation partnerships with university, national and private research labs. Through our ongoing Convening Series, our Annual Conference, and Executive Education for Policy Makers, CalCEF Innovations also initiates timely conversations across policy, technology and finance that are absent in the evolving debate around cleantech and climate change.