NETL celebrated its successful collaboration to transform Pittsburgh’s energy infrastructure through innovation at the Federal Laboratory Consortium’s (FLC) National Meeting.

The annual meeting was held Tuesday through Thursday, April 23-25 in Orlando, Florida, and attracted hundreds of technology transfer professionals seeking to learn, strategize and foster business connections. Representatives from NETL accepted the 2019 State and Local Economic Development Award during a Wednesday evening ceremony and exhibited a poster that detailed the award-winning City of Pittsburgh Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) effort.

NETL partnered with the city in 2015 to establish Pittsburgh as a “Clean Energy City of the Future” by creating a network of small-scale distributed energy systems that supply about 300,000 residents with clean, reliable and cost-effective power. The MOU work created a model of cooperation for federal laboratories seeking to engage with their local communities, demonstrated the powerful impact of the Lab’s mission and spurred valuable economic investments that will benefit the Pittsburgh region for decades to come.

“The FLC National Meeting is a unique opportunity to share the impact of the City of Pittsburgh MOU project with technology transfer professionals and other potential NETL partners across the country,” said Mike Knaggs, associate director of Strategic Partnerships. “In doing so, we’re proving that cutting-edge fossil fuel technologies developed at NETL and other national laboratories play an important role in a clean energy future by providing safe, efficient and affordable energy options.”

To learn more about NETL’s City of Pittsburgh MOU work, click here.

Beyond the awards and exhibits, the FLC National Meeting offered training from field experts, highlighted commercialization best practices, shared insight into the latest technology transfer trends and legislation, and created networking opportunities with industry.

The FLC is a Congressionally-mandated organization that fosters best-practice strategies for commercialization and promotes opportunities to transfer federal technologies from laboratories to the marketplace for maximum benefit. The FLC network includes more than 300 federal laboratories, agencies and research centers nationwide.