NEWBURYPORT — For the student who wants to save the world, becoming a chemist may not be first on the to-do list. But according to nationally recognized chemist Dr. John Warner, it should be.
Warner came to the Clean Tech Center in Newburyport yesterday to participate in a seminar with U.S. Rep. John Tierney and local business leaders on opportunities to profit through sustainability.
The gathering was also a chance for Tierney to formally present the founders of the Clean Tech Center with a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Business Enterprise Grants Program to continue serving as a green business incubator.
The Clean Tech Center is already helping to grow three small, environmentally sustainable businesses within a 30,000-square-foot facility on Mulliken Way owned and managed by Ralph Castagna. Yesterday's visit by Warner and Tierney was aimed at unveiling a possible new chapter in the center's short history — as a future site for a toxicity testing laboratory.
The laboratory would be the first of its kind in the world and could give the U.S. an advantage over international competition in the sustainability market, said Warner, president and chief technology officer of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry in Wilmington.
Tierney, who helped the center pursue the $50,000 grant, said he is committed to promoting the facility's future use as a testing lab for companies seeking sustainable ways to create their unique products.
"There's an opportunity in this country to get the economy moving and really get people back to work," he said.
The visit to Newburyport offered Tierney a break from the ongoing dialogue in Washington, D.C., on whether to raise the nation's debt ceiling to deal with the country's ongoing budget crisis. Tierney said although there are many questions about how the bank bailout and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have contributed to the debt crisis facing the U.S., expenditures for grants that invest in America's future competitiveness must continue.
Just as the government has always invested in "nascent" industries like the railroad and Internet, Tierney said the government must invest in helping green chemistry and similar fledgling industries get off the ground or face the consequences of seeing the country lose its competitive edge to India and China.
In a recent study compiled by Ernst & Young measuring various countries' attractiveness for clean technology business, Tierney said China ranked No. 1 for the second year in a row. Germany is second this year, he said. The U.S. used to be ranked first.
And while the U.S. is ranked third in its promise for one-year growth, it's not even in the top 10 countries based on projections for growth over the next five years, he said.
Tierney hopes to change that by promoting ideas like the one Warner is pursuing to develop a testing facility business in Newburyport, which would be unlike any other business operating in the world.
"(Warner's) the only human being on the planet who can get this person to read a book on chemistry," Tierney said.
Warner has a doctorate in chemistry from an Ivy League school. But despite the overwhelming push in the world toward green solutions in business, Warner said he never was asked to take a course on how manufacturing chemicals can create something harmful.
"No one ever saw fit to teach me about what makes a molecule toxic," he said.
Even today, he said, there is little to no effort in the U.S. to teach young students entering the field of chemistry how to anticipate potentially harmful results. In contrast, India and China, which are aiming to corner the sustainable products market, are mandating that the effects of chemical production be incorporated into scientific studies.
Meanwhile, U.S. companies seeking to go green and become more sustainable are waiting in the wings, with their ear to customers hoping they will define what sustainable means to them, he said.
"All you're going to hear is the voice of your competitor," said Warner, who urged business owners to come up with the sustainable solutions customers want before someone else does.
Warner said centers like Clean Tech's facility in Newburyport are becoming more common throughout the nation, as cities and regional initiatives strive to compete in an industry with little risk of fading into obscurity.
"What they don't have is Congressman Tierney," said Warner, referencing Tierney's support and understanding of what's at stake for the U.S. in the race to the top of the environmental production line.
Warner believes Newburyport, through the Clean Tech Center and its sophisticated management team, could become the hub for a business that directs companies of every shape and size on how to create products that are safe for users.
Warner envisions an effort that involves students from local high schools and Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill and business leaders like Mike Strem of Strem Chemicals in Newburyport and other companies with manufacturing facilities in the city that might take on the work of building the end product.
"What this (Clean Tech) center is doing is dreaming about what we can do," Warner said. "If we can have it manufactured here in our state, with people who have graduated from our high schools and community colleges, it doesn't get any better than that."
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