Clint Wilder says the clean-tech sector is "guaranteed to grow."

Far from being a new phenomenon, the green movement has been around for at least 35 years, if we use the first Earth Day in 1970 as a grassroots bellwether. What makes today strikingly different: Big business is signing on, both by embracing green practices in-house and, importantly, by leading the drive to develop the "clean-tech" energy technologies — solar power, wind power, and advances in biofuels, among them - needed to make the color shift a permanent one.

For Sausalito resident Clint Wilder, the response by big business to what green consumers and activists have been championing for decades confirms what he has been tracking for the past four years as a writer and analyst: that the time is right to begin looking at the investment opportunities the clean-tech sector represents.

"These are technologies that people really need," says Wilder, co-author of The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity (Collins, June 2007). "It's not about the 'irrational exuberance' of the Internet bubble days. There aren't a bunch of wacky ideas floating around.

"Very simply put, this is a sector that's guaranteed to grow. That doesn't mean every company's stock will in-crease. But I think it's time to look, research, and invest."

Wilder works with Clean Edge, a San Francisco-based research firm that has been keeping its eye on the clean-energy market since 2001, feeding its findings to companies, investors, and government agencies. Last fall, the company teamed with NASDAQ to launch the NASDAQ Clean Edge U.S. Index, which tracks the performance of companies working on clean- and renewable-energy technologies.

"Clean Edge founders Ron Pernick and Joel Makower had a vision for what was coming," says Wilder, "and now it's here. It's not like there was a specific tipping point that led to the sector's recent growth spurt. But if you had to work up a timeline, certainly Hurricane Katrina would be at the top of the chart - along with Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth."

What Goes Up Isn't Coming Down

As Clean Edge advised this spring in its Clean Energy Trends 2007 report, 2006 was the year "even the most ar-dent naysayers about global climate change began to change their tune." It's an about-face that Wilder says marks the beginning of turning clean energy into a mainstream solution, "not just an alternative one."

For public companies dependent on investors, the bottom line, not altruism, is what counts. But in today's business and environmental climate, profit and corporate responsibility are merging, primarily in response to a key and stark reality: It's bad business to work in a volatile market, which is exactly what "old" energy now represents.

"Business is embracing clean energy because of different forces coming together at the same time, and the primary force is fuel-price volatility. We see it every day at the gas station," says Wilder. "A business trying to budget and plan its future course needs certainty. Nothing is as uncertain as the price of oil and natural gas - and, to a lesser degree, coal."

In terms of reactions to global warming, Hurricane Katrina drove the point dangerously home - and the first in-dustry to sound the alarm was, appropriately, the companies that insure the insurers: reinsurers, led by Swiss Re following the disastrous 2005 hurricane season. Also taking the future seriously is a company that might surprise its vocal detractors: Wal-Mart.

"In late 2005, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott launched a company-wide initiative that took a look at energy use, from refrigeration needs to fueling the trucks," says Wilder. "He even included the company's suppliers in his energy audit."

It was a revolutionary step to take for any company, let alone the world's largest retailer. Yet at Wal-Mart, energy is, as the Clean Edge report notes, "a billion-dollar line item," second in cost only to labor. By concentrating on its energy footprint — including switching to fluorescent lighting, moving toward a massive storewide solar panel pro-ject, and using a fleet of hybrid-electric diesel delivery trucks — Wal-Mart is setting the bar high. It's also helping to drive the market for those companies that install solar systems, develop hybrid-diesel technologies, and produce fluorescent bulbs.

Home Is Where the Green Is

While investing is a primary focus of Wilder's book, in it, he and co-author Pernick of Clean Edge also look at the cities and regions in the United States that are pioneering the use of clean energy. Marin is a good example, says Wilder, who is on the executive committee of the Sierra Club Marin Group and helps to lead education classes of-fered by the Environmental Forum of Marin. "We're pretty progressive in the county," Wilder acknowledges. "Just look at all the Priuses."

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Clean Edge > www.cleanedge.com