What’s the Latest Development?

Japan’s nuclear crisis, political conflagration in the Middle East, exorbitant gas prices, the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the coal mine disaster in West Virginia last year have helped intensify interest in alternative energy, says USA Today. It claims green start-ups are now raking in record amounts of investments. “Everyone, it seems, is going green—or thinking about it.”

What’s the Big Idea?

 “It’s not alternative: We think of it as mainstream,” says Alan Salzman, CEO of VantagePoint Capital Partners, an investor in electric-car maker Tesla Motors. Clean tech is now as hot as the rest of the tech industry. Large, established companies are pursuing partnerships with up-and-coming companies. Promising start-ups are being snapped up as acquisitions. Initial public offerings are sprouting like vegetables.