Green Wombat

originally uploaded by Simon Kapadia

When it comes to incubating clean technology which city is the greenest of them all? Austin, according to a survey by SustainLane, a San Francisco service that provides environmental management and policy information to governments and businesses. The Texas capital won for its Clean Energy Incubator, the University of Texas’s research and development programs and Austin Energy, a municipal owned utility pursuing renewable sources of electricity. (It probably doesn’t hurt that the city itself has declared it will go carbon neutral by 2020.)

Taking the No. 2 spot is San Jose, the self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley. No surprise there, given the valley’s venture capital firepower and concentration of tech companies going green, like chip equipment maker Applied Materials (AMAT)’s move into solar cell machines. And while not green tech companies themselves, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Sun Microsystems (SUN) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are pushing energy-efficiency chips and computer servers.

Green Wombat’s hometown of Berkeley ranks No. 3 due to the University of California’s new $500 million biofuels research center funded by BP (BP) and the presence of the  Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Berkeley also is the headquarters of solar energy company PowerLight, recently acquired by SunPower (SPWR).

Pasadena scored the No. 4 slot for hosting NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, the California Institute of Technology and a variety of Southern California alt energy companies.

The Boston area came in fifth for its concentration of renewable energy startups and big brains at MIT.

Runner-ups: San Francisco, New York, Seattle, San Diego and Houston.