A California state fund set up to invest in clean energies said Wednesday it awarded the University of California, Davis, with a $1-million grant to establish the world’s first university energy-efficiency center to help bring energy innovations to market.

“We’re aware of the need for the next stage of energy efficiency innovations to get moving today,” said Dan Adler, the California Clean Energy Fund’s (CalCEF) director of policy and technology. “On the demand side, innovative approaches haven’t been applied the way they should.”

The center plans to help spur marketable innovations by bringing together leaders in academia, industry, and investment, he said.

The hope is that the center will not only promote early-stage research, but will also help scientists find business partners and clarify business models, he said. Another goal is to help venture capitalists better understand energy efficiency technologies and the potential customers.

“We’re trying to break down those barriers,” Mr. Adler said. “Energy efficiency opportunities and challenges are all around us, and the technologies exist to take advantage of them. It’s a matter of focused, innovative, and multidisciplinary approaches to get them into the marketplace.”

Aside from being the first academic center dedicated to energy efficiency, the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center is also the best-funded energy efficiency center in the world, according to CalCEF.

The university will match the energy fund’s $1-million grant with $1.3 million in operating and research funds, faculty time, and office and laboratory space. If the center meets milestones established by CalCEF, it will receive another $1 million in two years, Mr. Adler said.

CalCEF is a $30-million fund that was created as part of the 2003 Pacific Gas & Electric’s bankruptcy settlement (see CalCEF to Fund New Center).

Aside from UC Davis, three other Northern California universities applied for the grant, Mr. Adler said.

UC Davis’ proposal was chosen because it focused on practical results and commercialization of energy-efficiency technologies, he said. “The idea was, ‘Let’s fund basic early-stage research that should be taking place at the university level, and help connect that with venture funding, to help it move as efficiently as possible.’”

The center will focus on efficiency in buildings, transportation, and agriculture and food production.

A History of Technology Transfer

Andrew Hargadon, founding director of the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center, said he thinks the school’s long history of research in clean energy and energy efficiency helped give it an edge. Also helping it was the school’s background in technology transfer and in partnering with governments, utilities, and consumers.

“Quite honestly, being UC Davis, we’re really excited we were chosen over Berkeley and Stanford,” said Mr. Hargadon, who is also an associate professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. “We’re not going to revolutionize our energy systems overnight, but there are possibilities for dramatic gains by doing a better job of commercializing the energy efficiency technologies that are there now.”

Many other academic centers are devoted to energy research, such as those at the University of California, Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of New South Wales, among numerous others. But most of the research has focused on energy generation, rather than on energy efficiency.

In general, energy efficiency technologies have not received as much attention—or funding—as technologies that generate energy, such as solar and wind power.

“Energy efficiency has not been a particularly sexy topic,” Mr. Adler said. “It just has not been particularly compelling in the financial community or in the technology community. But energy is becoming so much more magnified in the public mind, and we need the whole suite of energy solutions that we can bring to bear.”

Focusing on Demand

Mr. Hargadon said it makes sense to separate energy efficiency from energy generation. “When you’re tied with all the others, you’re competing with all the others for attention and for research,” he said. “But also I think it’s a different beast. You have different industry partners, and you’re looking at a different solution set.”

Supply-side and demand-side technologies need to be commercialized differently, because “people will spend a dollar to make a dollar, but they won’t spend a dollar to save a dollar,” he said. “It’s a marketing challenge. You’ve got to find the areas where they are willing to spend $0.50 to save a dollar. And you’ve really got to know who gains to make the sale.”

Among the technologies the energy-efficiency center will help to reach new markets will be low-energy lighting and low-energy cooling technologies being developed at other centers at UC Davis, he said.

Mr. Adler said he was surprised by the substantial amount of interest CalCEF received, even from a number of universities that didn’t submit proposals but wanted to get involved in energy efficiency.

“People are finally realizing there’s a lot there,” he said. “Energy efficiency is the cheapest and cleanest form of energy, and we need every technological solution that we can find to meeting the energy challenge.”