A new center dedicated to developing solar energy and energy efficiency will rise in Kendall Square, with a goal to stoke the state's growing clean techology sector.

The new MIT-Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems was announced Saturday by Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Susan Hockfield, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Ian Bowles, Massachusetts secretary of energy and environmental affairs.

The center, with $5 million in initial funding by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and $1 million from National Grid, is a partnership between the university and Germany's giant Fraunhofer Institute. About 60 jobs will be created at first, officials said, with hopes that innovations born and/or developed there can be licensed and spun off to for-profit companies.

Bowles said the state investment reflects Governor Deval Patrick's ''commitment to making Massachusetts the national leader’’ in clean energy. He described the German institute as a leader in alternative energy research, roughtly comparable in US terms to a combination of the Battelle research consortium, the National Scientific Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. "This should pay real dividends for us'' with a vast number of potential partners available in the area, he said.