The Business Benefits of Going Green

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In the eight chapters devoted to specific technologies (solar energy, wind power, biofuels and biomaterials, green buildings, personal transportation, smart grid, mobile applications, and water filtration), Pernick and Wilder present alphabetical "10 to watch" lists (see BusinessWeek.com, 05/21/07, "Nuclear Power: A Bad Reaction").

These include international companies such as Suntech Power (STP), based in China's Jiangsu Province, which manufactures solar cells and is the first Chinese solar power company to go public on the New York Stock Exchange, alongside well-funded U.S. startups such as Menlo Park (Calif.)-based Cilion, which makes ethanol fuel. Cilion is backed by respected venture-capital Silicon Valley firm Khosla Ventures (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/19/07, "Ethanol: Too Much Hype—and Corn").

Although the book might have the word "investment" in its subtitle, its authors don't want readers to use The Clean Tech Revolution as a stock-picking guide. This might sound counterintuitive, but Wilder is firm on the point. "'Investment' as we define it isn't just about pure dollars," Wilder said in a phone interview. "We want it to be clear that it's important to talk about investment in terms of the future economic health of a region [when discussing investing in clean technologies]."

A Growing Library

To highlight this point, the authors present an insightful chapter called "Create Your Own Silicon Valley," toward the end of the book, featuring 10 "clean tech clusters" around the world that hold promise in terms of becoming centers of clean-tech business development. The list includes Hyderabad, India—which has a tradition of solar power research and development at local universities and established biotech companies—as well as Copenhagen, Denmark. That country, as the authors write, is the "world leader in wind production per capita, with wind turbines supplying some 30% of the nation's electricity." This highly original and intriguing chapter could have easily become a book in its own right.

The Clean Tech Revolution has some stiff competition, in terms of resources written for executives of all ranks, industrial designers, and laypeople eager to learning more about eco-friendly products and business practices. The editors of the Web site Worldchanging.com published a compendium of articles in the fall of 2006, as a hefty book, called Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/26/06, "Can Design Change the World?").

The Worldchanging site and book have business sections, featuring articles such as Is Clean Energy the New Tech Boom? Popular blogs such as treehugger.com also feature clean-technology companies and products on a daily basis. And on the print magazine front, mainstream, big-media outlets such as Vanity Fair and Elle magazines publish annual "green" issues devoted to eco-friendly companies and products.

Gathering Precious Water

But what sets Pernick and Wilder's book apart is its focus on the business benefits of going green, from money saved by building eco-friendly corporate headquarters and lowering heating and cooling bills, to money earned by startups committed to creating clean technologies. Other books, magazines, and Web sites tend to include clean-tech and green business within a spectrum of other lifestyle, political, environmental, or design topics.

The Clean Tech Revolution, with its colorful and varied narrative chapter introductions (ranging from the experience of driving a hybrid car in sunny, affluent Marin County, Calif., to a short vignette of families gathering precious water in the remote Indian village of Korukollu), promises to be a valuable snapshot, at least, of the tipping point of international green business in the late 2000s. And Pernick's and Wilder's predictions and analyses are sure to grow more valuable as references.

After all, companies specializing in clean tech are clearly poised to grow within the next decade. Business advisory firm LECG predicts, for example, that the ethanol industry will add more than 203,879 U.S. jobs and contribute an estimated $46 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product by 2015. In addition, LECG predicts that biodiesel makers will add more than 39,000 jobs and $24 billion to the U.S. GDP by 2015, while the wind-power industry will create more than 12,500 new jobs and add between $100 million and $200 million to the U.S. GDP, also within the next eight years.

The so-called clean-tech revolution promises to continue, and savvy designers, brand strategists, consumers, and investors with their eyes on "green" success, in both senses of the word, would be wise to pay attention.

Click here to view eight companies featured in The Clean Tech Revolution.

Jana is a writer with BusinessWeek.com in New York.