If you think Green is about Granola any longer, you are mistaken. Since the 1970’s, the word “environmental” seemed to have a stigma that meant you undoubtedly had a pony-tail and less ambition that rest of the Baby Boomers.  If you still believe this, you are about to miss the next decade or two of economic growth in America.

Smart CEOs have begun to make the leap and are going to ‘Clean-up’ economically while doing good for the environment.  How, you ask?  By joining into Wall Street’s favorite word for Green…Clean.  Clean Technology (aka Cleantech) and Green Technology (aka Greentech) are both new capitalistic ways to go green.  If you don’t believe me, then read what is happening in Silicon Valley with some of the country’s most impressive executive talent: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/10/06/focus6.html?b=1223265600%5e1711395 .

With the Bailout legislation incorporating over a hundred pages of content related to alternative energy and other incentives to boost investment in ‘clean-up’ technologies, you can count on job opportunities in the cleantech sector that are expected to help reduce our national dependence on oil.  The good news is that you don’t have to have an environmental degree or be a Ph.D. to get in the clean-green job hunt.  Many of the companies that are going to be ramping up or commercializing these new technologies will need executive expertise from formerly competing industries.  Don’t be shocked if you find Oil Execs jumping off the their slippery slope of ‘dirty’ fuel to clean their conscience with start-up Solar, Biomass, and Wind Energy firms.  Not only will they secure lucrative equity packages that will incentivize them to use their expertise to compete with their former employers, but–who knows?– they may be hoping for better karma as well.  Either way, many sharp leaders have already caught the green bug and will be looking into new wells of prosperity to fuel their careers.

This article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle is an interesting read because it emphasizes the fact that water and power generation are inextricably tied to one another.   Although clean energy gets center stage in this environmental revolution since solving energy will unbind our economy from foreign countries which supply oil, the water issue should not be pushed aside as less essential to our environmental and economic health.  Not only do we need water for energy generation, we need clean water supply to maintain the quality of life we’ve become so accustomed to.  Watch a documentary about water, such as Flow, and the prospects of sustained water shortages becomes terrifying on an individual level, but also a global geopolitical level as well.  Once upon a time the saying was “he who has the gold rules,” one day it maybe “he/she who has the water survives.”     The good news is companies like GE seem to be ‘connecting the environmental dots’ between renewable energy and water in a global way.   To read : http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/06/08/daily86.html?surround=lfn