For corporate decision makers, “it’s not a question of ‘should I pay attention to this?’ but ‘what can I do?’” he said.

To help them, there is institutional-level research into energy-efficient products and processes conducted by such companies as Deutsche Bank Group and Goldman Sachs. For the first time, those entities are seeing real investment opportunity in sustainability, Zeno said.

Second, investors now are looking for better reporting of a company’s environmental record. They want sustainability reporting and financial results in the same document, he said.

“If I know a company is more efficient with its energy usage, that tells me they have intelligent management,” Zeno said.

Finally, values-based investing is growing. Socially responsible investing used to mean screening out companies that deal in products or services that particular investors found objectionable. Now the definition is expanding to analyses of corporations’ social responsibility. A large component of social responsibility is sustainability, he said
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“If there’s money to be made, supply will come,” Pino added.

The last statement is quite important to understand and explains the drive now and in the future for clean tech.