Shaping a green corridor

The city of Berkeley recently joined forces with the cities of Oakland, Richmond, and Emeryville; the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley); and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to form the “Green Corridor,” a region-focused initiative for attracting and supporting green business in the East Bay. Michael Caplan, economic development manager for the city of Berkeley, says the move has made the region eligible for more funding already, both from the federal government and from local utilities such as Pacific Gas & Electric, which is considering the Green Corridor for a grant that will fund green-collar job training programs.

Just as Stanford is credited with kicking off the formation of Silicon Valley, it was UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau who spearheaded the formation of the Green Corridor. The chancellor hosted the mayors of Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond and Emeryville; the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab; the economic development managers from each city; and CEOs from local cleantech startups that have licensing agreements with the university. Then, according to Caplan, Birgeneau said, “Look at what is happening here all around us. What can we do to pull it all together?”

Eventually the Green Corridor will expand to include more cities, and Caplan says he hopes it will grow to incorporate the entire nine-county Bay Area some day. It’s a step toward collaboration and regional thinking, but Caplan still defends the formation of an East-Bay-only regional initiative by saying, “San Francisco and Silicon Valley get a lot of attention and have for a long time. We felt the need to tell our own story.”