Clint Wilder has taken up residence at the crux of the cleantech movement. Whether he’s hailing the mainstreaming of cleantech on Clean Edge’s website or touring the countrywith his new book, The Cleantech Revolution, (co-authored by Ron Pernick), he’s ready and willing to give you the skinny on just about any cleantech-related topic.

At heart of it, Clint and Ron’s new book is about the immense financial opportunity that lies in "any product, service, or process that delivers value using limited or zero nonrenewable resources and/or creates significantly less waste than conventional offerings." Following on the computer, Internet, and biotech revolutions, cleantech holds the promise to be the next turbocharged engine for economic growth both here in the US and abroad.

Among the usual suspects (solar, wind, biofuels/biomaterials, smart grid: "making improvements to the stupid grid"), the book includes a chapter that highlights how cities can get involved in the cleantech movement, entitled "create your own Silicon Valley." Each chapter of the book closes with ten important emerging players in the space. In true world-is-flat form, the authors noted emerging cleantech hubs in such diverse areas as Hyderabad, India; Austin, Texas; Shanghai, China; and Copenhagen, Denmark.

A related chapter, which actually didn’t make the final cut for inclusion in the book, was called "leapfrog nations." Herein, the authors describe how huge areas of India, for example, are off-grid - so individual communities and families often generate power onsite using solar, small wind, or biogas. The trend of note is this: rather than traditional grant-enabled work by the World Bank, more and more for-profit companies are now getting into these markets because they make financial sense for the first time.

I recently attended a reading of the book at Stacey’s here in San Francisco. When clean coal and nuclear came up at the end of the talk, Clint was asked to define the blurry line between technologies that can be considered cleantech and those that cannot. His response? "If they called it cleaner coal, I’d be more comfortable with that, but bottom line: they are not clean." He conceded that the efforts are good, but they just can’t be lumped under the same umbrella as solar and wind. Ain’t that the truth.