Hasta La Ideas

In a bid to contribute to a cleaner and greener world, Autodesk announced at the Clean Tech Open renewable energy symposium earlier this week that they’ll be giving nearly $150,000 of design software–each–to 100 companies as part of its Clean Tech Partner Program.

The goal of the program is to spur innovation and speed the time-to-market for pathbreaking clean technologies. Although the grants are loosely aimed at renewable energy innovators, applications are open to anyone working in designing more sustainable products.

“We are looking for some of the best and most exciting ideas that we think can be transformative in the marketplace,” explained Lynelle Cameron, director of sustainability for Autodesk. “These are the [companies] that we want to partner with and learn from in future releases of our products.”

Grant recipients will receive up to five seats of each of the following Autodesk design applications: AutoCAD Inventor Professional, Autodesk Showcase Professional, Autodesk Vault Manufacturing, Autodesk Navisworks Manage, Autodesk Revit Architecture, and Autodesk Alias Design. This suite of software can streamline the entire product-design lifecycle, according to Keith Perrin, Industry Solution Manager at Autodesk.

Reuters reports that Autodesk will have applications for the program up on their website; but at the time of posting this entry, it did not yet appear to be in place.

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