Clint Wilder is a business journalist who has covered the high-tech and clean-tech industries since 1985.
Clint Wilder is senior editor at Clean Edge, a clean-tech research and strategy firm in the San Francisco Bay Area and Portland, Oregon, where he coauthors reports and writes columns on industry trends and has been a facilitator at the Clinton Global Initiative. He is a frequent speaker at clean-energy and green business events in the U.S. and overseas, and a regular blogger for the Huffington Post. [1] In 2002, Mr. Wilder won the American Society of Business Publications Editors award for best feature series. He is also co-author of The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity, published in June 2007, which has been translated into seven languages. [2] [3]
Wilder's forthcoming book is Clean Tech Nation: How the U.S. Can Lead in the New Global Economy (HarperCollins, September 2012). [4]
Clean technology, also called cleantech or climatetech, is any process, product, or service that reduces negative environmental impacts through significant energy efficiency improvements, the sustainable use of resources, or environmental protection activities. Clean technology includes a broad range of technology related to recycling, renewable energy, information technology, green transportation, electric motors, green chemistry, lighting, grey water, and more. Environmental finance is a method by which new clean technology projects can obtain financing through the generation of carbon credits. A project that is developed with concern for climate change mitigation is also known as a carbon project.
Google.org, founded in October 2005, is the charitable arm of Google, a multinational technology company. The organization has committed roughly US$100 million in investments and grants to nonprofits annually.
The International Solar Energy Society (ISES) is a global organization for promoting the development and utilization of renewable energy. ISES is a UN-accredited NGO headquartered in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. Dr. David S. Renné is the current president.
Renewable energy commercialization involves the deployment of three generations of renewable energy technologies dating back more than 100 years. First-generation technologies, which are already mature and economically competitive, include biomass, hydroelectricity, geothermal power and heat. Second-generation technologies are market-ready and are being deployed at the present time; they include solar heating, photovoltaics, wind power, solar thermal power stations, and modern forms of bioenergy. Third-generation technologies require continued R&D efforts in order to make large contributions on a global scale and include advanced biomass gasification, hot-dry-rock geothermal power, and ocean energy. In 2019, nearly 75% of new installed electricity generation capacity used renewable energy and the International Energy Agency (IEA) has predicted that by 2025, renewable capacity will meet 35% of global power generation.
According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, renewable energy accounted for 8.4% of total primary energy production and 21% of total utility-scale electricity generation in the United States in 2022.
The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity is a 2007 book by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder, who say that commercializing clean technologies is a profitable enterprise that is moving steadily into mainstream business. As the world economy faces challenges from energy price spikes, resource shortages, global environmental problems, and security threats, clean technologies are seen to be the next engine of economic growth.
Ron Pernick is an American author who is the co-founder and managing director of Clean Edge, a developer and publisher of thematic stock indexes tracking clean energy, transportation, water, and the grid. He is a market research, publishing, and business development entrepreneur.
Clean Energy Trends is a series of reports by Clean Edge which examine markets for solar, wind, geothermal, fuel cells, biofuels, and other clean energy technologies. Since the publication of the first Clean Energy Trends report in 2002, Clean Edge has provided an annual snapshot of both the global and U.S. clean energy sector markets.
Solar power includes solar farms as well as local distributed generation, mostly on rooftops and increasingly from community solar arrays. In 2023, utility-scale solar power generated 164.5 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 3.9% of electricity in the United States. Total solar generation that year, including estimated small-scale photovoltaic generation, was 238 TWh.
The renewable-energy industry is the part of the energy industry focusing on new and appropriate renewable energy technologies. Investors worldwide are increasingly paying greater attention to this emerging industry. In many cases, this has translated into rapid renewable energy commercialization and considerable industry expansion. The wind power, solar power and hydroelectric power industries provide good examples of this.
The International Renewable Energy Conference (IREC) is a meeting of senior-level representatives, such as those from the Executive and Legislative branches of national or sub-national governments, international organizations, the finance and business community, or civil societies, working towards the advancement and integration of renewable energy in their countries.
Solar power in Arizona has the potential to, according to then-Governor Janet Napolitano, make Arizona "the Persian Gulf of solar energy". In 2012, Arizona had 1,106 MW of photovoltaic (PV) solar power systems, and 6 MW of concentrated solar power (CSP), bringing the total to over 1,112 megawatts (MW) of solar power. As an example, the Solana Generating Station, a 280 MW parabolic trough solar plant, when commissioned in 2013, was the largest parabolic trough plant in the world and the first U.S. solar plant with molten salt thermal energy storage.
Philip David Radford is an American activist who served as the executive director of Greenpeace USA. He was the founder and President of Progressive Power Lab, an organization that incubates companies and non-profits that build capacity for progressive organizations, including a donor advisory organization Champion.us, the Progressive Multiplier Fund and Membership Drive. Radford is a co-founder of the Democracy Initiative, was founder and executive director of Power Shift, and is a board member of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. He has a background in grassroots organizing, corporate social responsibility, climate change, and clean energy. He currently serves as the Chief Strategy officer at the Sierra Club.
The energy policy of the Obama administration was defined by an "all-of-the-above" approach which offered federal support for renewable energy deployment, increased domestic oil and gas extraction, and export of crude oil and natural gas. His presidency's first term was shaped by the failure of his signature climate legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, to pass, and then climate and energy disasters including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 and then Hurricane Sandy, which took place during the 2012 election. In his second term, Obama lifted the ban on crude oil exports and approved liquified natural gas exports; his planned regulatory approach to reducing greenhouse pollution in the electricity sector, the Clean Power Plan, was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Clean Tech Nation: How the U.S. Can Lead in the New Global Economy is a 2012 book written by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder. The book surveys the expansion of clean technology and renewable energy over the past decade. It tracks the growth of wind power and solar photovoltaics and shows that these markets grew 20 fold from 2000 to 2010. Factors which are driving the global expansion of clean tech are identified, as are the new economic opportunities which are being created. China, the United States, and Germany are leading the way. Clean Tech Nation is the sequel to the 2007 book The Clean Tech Revolution.
Clean Edge, Inc., founded in 2000, is a U.S.-based developer and publisher of thematic stock indexes tracking clean energy, transportation, water, and the grid. The firm's first index, the Nasdaq Clean Edge Green Energy Index (CELS), was launched with Nasdaq in 2006. Financial products tracking the firm's indexes and universes exceed $2.5 billion in assets under management.
Peter L. Corsell is an American technology entrepreneur, leader, and investor. A repeat entrepreneur in the sustainable energy industry, Corsell founded GridPoint in 2003, and Twenty First Century Utilities in 2015.
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is an intergovernmental organization mandated to facilitate cooperation, advance knowledge, and promote the adoption and sustainable use of renewable energy. It is the first international organisation to focus exclusively on renewable energy, addressing needs in both industrialised and developing countries. It was founded in 2009 and its statute entered into force on 8 July 2010. The agency is headquartered in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi. The Director-General of IRENA is Francesco La Camera, a national of Italy. IRENA is an official United Nations observer.
The green bubble is an economic theory that the world is facing an over-investment in renewable energy and that the current levels of debts in many clean technology companies are unsustainable. As the interest rate rises many clean technology projects will go bust, a major setback for the renewable energy industry.