News
Chicago’s clean-energy innovators and investors aim to catch up with the coasts
The catalyst behind Chicago’s growing clean-energy movement was not a breakthrough discovery by a local scientist or a hot local company with a market-transforming technology.
It was a new car.
When Nicholas Pritzker, former Hyatt Corp. CEO, stepped on the accelerator of his battery-driven Tesla roadster in 2008, he felt the vehicle surge forward with all the force of a gas-powered sports car. He decided immediately that clean energy was an economic force to be reckoned with, and that Chicago needed to be involved.
