INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — Ben Solomon and his wife live in a house that's fully sustainable, and their most recent energy bill was just $21, only that much because of the power used to charge his electric car.

So when Jim Croce spoke last week about the future of sustainable energy efforts in Nevada, all he needed to do was look across the stage to find the perfect example of the possibilities — Solomon.

“Ben is just a pioneer in this space,” Croce said.

Croce, president and CEO of Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization, spoke at a fireside chat with Solomon at the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences at Sierra Nevada College Thursday, April 29. A crowd of 50 attendees included guests from Reno, Carson City and Las Vegas.

A Michigan native, Croce previously worked for DTE Energy before founding a renewable energy incubator similar to NIREC at Wayne State University in Detroit. He came to NIREC, which is housed at the college, in June of last year. The institute's goal is to assist with taking “bleeding edge” technologies from a laboratory and helping to start companies in Nevada based around those energy technologies, Croce said.

“Basically, to get this innovation, this intellectual property, out of a lab and into the hands of an entrepreneur,” Croce said.

The funding that the institute provides helps businesses scale “the valley of death” where funding is impossible to come by, Croce said.

“We're filling a gap between basic funding that's available across the nation and venture capital funding,” he said.

Nevada's opportunity in renewable energies, Croce said, is to utilize its experience in design, build and real estate to be a part of the geothermal and solar industries. The energy produced here could easily serve the large, needy California market, he said. Croce cited Wyoming, a state with low education levels that had found success in fuel production, as a model for what Nevada could do.

“Nevada ought to have an opportunity to be a major force,” he said. “We look at the I-80 corridor between Salt Lake City and the Bay Area as being our focus.”

While the state is competing with other areas in the U.S., Croce said the interest that China and other nations have in renewable energies makes this a national security issue. Chinese provinces have large amounts of money to spend on these types of technologies, he said.

“The question for the U.S. is, to what extent are we going to be a major force in this space, versus an also-ran?” Croce said. “I am more concerned about the long-term competitiveness of this country.”

For now, NIREC is judging its success project by project, Croce said. The institute receives a royalty or an equity from each of the businesses it helps to start, he said, and eventually the goal is to be fully self-sustaining.

“Clearly, we want to expand our reach,” Croce said.

Bob Aldrich of Carson City, the former board chairman of a NASDAQ-traded solar energy company, said NIREC's work is exciting to him.

“It's really a difficult challenge to take something from the embryo of an idea to a commercial operation,” Aldrich said. “Really I'm excited about what can be accomplished here.”

Paul Reed, president of Burly Wind Power Company in Reno, said he enjoyed hearing from Croce and liked NIREC's mission, but he wished the institute had a larger scope.

“I applied for one of their grants, and I just think what they're doing is phenomenal for Nevada and the U.S.,” Reed said.