InnovateMass Announces Its Latest Awardees

As clean energy becomes increasingly adopted across the globe, researchers and companies from Massachusetts are working hard to spearhead the next great developments in cleantech—and MassCEC wants to help.

Now in its fourth consecutive year, MassCEC’s competitive InnovateMass program announced its newest awardees in late February. InnovateMass seeks to guide innovative cleantech and water tech companies through what’s known as the “Commercialization Valley of Death:” the funding gap between early-stage and late-stage technology development which often stalls commercialization. The program tracks several different metrics throughout the course of each project – including the number of jobs created, funds leveraged, investors acquired, and strategic partners gained – to measure both the individual project’s success and the success of the program as a whole. InnovateMass aims to introduce not only a greater quantity, but a higher-quality of cleantech and water tech companies into the clean energy market.

The latest InnovateMass awardees, receiving grants of up to $150,000 from MassCEC, are:

• Somerville-based Menon Laboratories aims to install and field-test a water filtration unit in Barnstable County that will evaluate membrane performance for wastewater treatment. The Northeastern University spinoff company is hoping to see results that will significantly influence high-impact areas related to water reuse and recycling, as well as the extraction of nutrients and resources from wastewater.
• Resolute Marine, based in Amesbury, will spearhead the testing of a seawater-compatible hydraulic pumping system, which will generate power to purify seawater. It will also offset carbon emissions by replacing harmful oil- or glycol-based hydraulic fluids with seawater-compatible pumps.
• After a successful prototype deployment, WindESCo is ready to move towards commercialization with a commercial scale application at a large wind farm. WindESCo hopes their technology will increase the lifespan and efficiency of a turbine, thereby eliminating waste and creating more efficiently-generated clean energy.

The InnovateMass team, accompanied by technical consultant, The Cadmus Group, is excited to dive into these three new projects with gusto!