Clean tech innovators and the academic institutions that foster them have been pumping out resplendent technologies to help solve our energy issues. However, most consumers have not yet had their lives changed by these technologies because manufacturers are not ready to produce to scale. Distribution is absent, marketing is poor. What can be done to remedy these disconnects?

One idea is Copenmind, a conference that brings innovators and financiers together, with the hope of spawning marketable progeny.

The Danes are set to hold Copenmind, a giant clean tech conference, in Copenhagen over Labor Day weekend. The conference, already sold out of exhibition space, will bring together thousands of inventors, financiers, academics and executives. Organizers have recruited, and gained the support of, the most influential academic, research and industry institutions that exist.

It is more important than ever for universities to foster healthy relationships with the municipalities that house them; many of the most successful, innovative companies on earth (Google, for example) are spinoff organizations developed in business incubators based out of educational facilities. Stanford, MIT and others are famous for flipping their students from academics to entrepreneurs.

Events like Copenmind -- and the social network that can grow out of them -- are critical bridges between consumers and the green technologies that have the potential to transform our lives. Other challenges, like distribution and infrastructure development, are being addressed in creative private-public partnerships. Clean tech transfer is especially successful where governments act to support it, like Michigan’s initiative with cellulosic ethanol. There is clearly a well-established market for green technology now, supported by a burgeoning sustainability ethos. It is exciting to see inroads made to connect the demand for clean tech solutions with the innovators who’ve been dreaming them up for years.