A few years ago, when Sorin Grama had just finished graduate work at MIT and was looking for a place to build his new solar electricity startup, he came across an old abandoned warehouse.

“My partner and I were looking at it and said, ‘Well, it’s a lot of space here, maybe others can join, i’’s kind of lonely,'” Grama says. “We put out a call to the MIT community.”

Within weeks, a handful of startups were sharing that cavernous space.

“And we bonded. All the companies created a nice community, and we started sharing tools, people and ideas, and reading each other’s proposals for funding, things like that,” Grama says. “We had a great Christmas party one year.”

But the warehouse was slated to be torn down. The entrepreneurs stuck together though, and relocated. Soon, five companies became 20, and they needed a third, even bigger site.

Today, their home is a massive old mid-19th century pipe factory in Somerville, just outside of Boston. It’s called Greentown Labs, and it’s one of the most successful in a new wave of what are called green business incubators, clusters of startups looking to build a business by helping cut carbon emissions and fight climate change.

Read the full article from WGBH News