LAS VEGAS (CNNMoney.com) -- Don't try to sideline alternative energy.
Sure, most of the technologies still rely on subsidies to compete, the Wilder Hill Clean Energy Index is down nearly 14 percent in the last 12 months, and continued high oil prices or meaningful carbon regulation is far from certain in the United States.
But to leaders in the clean energy field, 2006 was a very good year.
Speaking at the Power-Gen renewable energy conference in Las Vegas Wednesday, American Council on Renewable Energy president Mike Eckhart rattled off a series of positive events.
It stared with rising awareness, helped in no small part by Al Gore's global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" released last summer.
Then there was California's solar initiative, which aims to have one million sun-powered homes in the next ten years.
Eckhart said the new Democrat-controlled Congress has already introduced 100 bills relating to renewable energy, and held up President Bush's $385 million grant to companies working on cellulosic ethanol.
And then there's the investment money.
In 2004, money flowing to renewables worldwide was about $28 billion, according to ACORE. By 2206 that number surged to nearly $71 billion.
"The reason we have so much money in the sector is the anticipation by financial markets that policies [promoting alternative energy] will be forthcoming," Dan Arvizu, director of the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, told the crowd.
Alec Dreyer, the former Dynegy chief now heading Goldman Sachs-owned Horizon Wind Energy, said his company will soon be building wind farms in the 1,000 megawatt range - big enough too achieve the economies of scale to go head-to-head with fossil fuels.
"These are not farms anymore," said Dreyer. "These are power plants."
Dreyer cheered the fact that U.S. electricity demand was showing strong growth, as it can provide a healthy market for clean power.
Partly due to this growth, and the feeling that U.S. lawmakers will ultimately pass rules curbing greenhouse gas emissions, American's appetite for renewable power, long second to Europe, was seen as surging.
"The U.S. market will be the largest market in the world," said Cameron "Mac" Moore, the North American head of Conergy AG, a big German solar company. "The question is now: how fast?"
Hoping to tap into this market and lure some business to his state, Nev. Gov. Jim Gibbons showed up, touting what he said were the state's low taxes and a streamlined regulatory environment.
"God bless you for what you are doing,' said Gibbons. "And come to Nevada."
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