Of course, universities' eagerness to lend a hand is not free from self-interest. Typically, an invention by a university-employed inventor (e.g. faculty, staff, paid PhD students) with substantial use of university facilities is the property of the university, with the inventor getting exclusive licensing rights to the patent. If a licensed technology forms the basis of a successful venture, that could mean big money for the school.

But Peter Adriaens, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan, says that the influx of interest is so new that until recently, the university didn't even have a comprehensive database of its clean tech-related inventions.

"Not so long ago, if an engineer had a small invention he would just hope that there would be someone on business side that would recognize brilliance and see the application," says Tim Falley, a colleague of Adriaens' and the managing director of Michigan's Zell-Lurie Institute.  "Most of the time, it would have died right there."

Last year, MIT's Entrepreneurship Center launched a class called "Energy Ventures," geared towards graduate students in engineering working on research applicable to the alternative energy market. It also now awards a Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize: $200,000 for first place,  "to help develop and motivate the next generation of energy entrepreneurs."

Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program also provides resources for linking inventions to investments through the two-year old Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency. Its Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship serves as a boot camp for graduate students looking to commercialize their inventions.

"What we try to do in terms of the course is to give them the sense that there is a structure in place for how to present your ideas," says Margaret Neale, a professor in Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and SIE instructor. "We give them a framework for how to approach business situations."

An early business education give engineering types the “ability to analyze problems in a different way, by focusing on a need in the market and working backwards to an invention," says Susan Broderick, the program manager of U.C. Berkeley’s  Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology

With the proper training, engineers can avoid embarking down research paths that will be ultimate dead ends, from a commercial standpoint.

"Engineers need to understand that the best technology does not win – the best application wins," says MIT’s Aulet. "They need to think very early on about whether something will create value in the real world."