The renewable energy boom By Jenny Jedeikin The new frontier To
explain the evolution that is currently underway in the clean
energy industry, many people in “the know” like to make an
analogy about what is happening; they compare the ramp-up in the
renewable energy industry to the technological transformation
that hit personal computers and cell phones throughout the last
two decades. “If you have a [smart phone], you’re holding the
confluence of a whole new industry in the palm of your hand,”
says Joel Makower, chairman and executive editor of GreenBiz
Group. “We’ve transformed how we do lots of things, in ways we
couldn’t have imagined even five years ago. Now that same kind
of technological confluence is coming to much bigger and slower
moving industries, like energy, buildings and vehicles. They’re
coming together to create a whole new wave of technologies that
are going to be dramatically more efficient while creating whole
new things we can all do.” Makower, who writes about this topic
on his high-traf