Green & Golden in Colorado

Written by: Brian Wingfield

DENVER -  Other governors must be drooling.

Tuesday afternoon, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter threw a lunch at the governor's mansion for executives from companies like Apple, Oracle, T-Mobile, Intel and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers--a powerhouse audience from some of the most important technology brands in the world. The ones that are, you know, booming.

They were there with TechNet, the political group for technology executives, to discuss "clean tech"--what's fast becoming the hottest topic at the Democratic National Convention, and for good reason. Finding new ways to power civilization offers up a box of goodies irresistible to everyone from Silicon Valley investors and engineers hoping for '90s-style payouts, to office-seeking senators looking for visionary solutions, to governors like Ritter, whose political lives depend on hauling home bacon by the ton.

So naturally, the executives got to hear a bit about Colorado. “The people of this state have a special relationship to the land,” Ritter told the group. He says that a focus on the environment is going to be a key element to building a 21st century economy. “It really is about job opportunities.” It sure is.

And Ritter's already ahead in this new derby, trying to position the state as a hotbed for green technology development. Denver Colorado's Airport was festooned this summer with ads branding Colorado State University a green technology epicenter. Earlier this month, Denmark-based wind energy company Vestas committed to putting $700 million in Colorado’s economy by building the world’s largest wind tower manufacturing plant there. The governor says it will create as many as 2,500 new jobs and help usher the new industry into the state.

Ritter's got business-friendly patter on the issue. He says the next U.S. Congress will “absolutely have to deal with” a market-based cap-and-trade system to curb carbon emissions, and he wants to “destroy the silos” between energy and climate policies.

Many of the firms in attendance Tuesday favor some of the ideas he espouses, like a permanent extension of the federal research and development credit, which Congress allowed to lapse in December. State and national mandates for renewable energy production are also popular items of discussion among the clean tech crowd.

An increasing number of businesses--particularly those that aren’t thought of as traditional energy companies--are getting in on the game. An executive from Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ), for example, says his company is now the world’s largest purchaser of renewable energy credits.

And of course there’s Google.org, a branch of the ubiquitous tech company that puts money into solving big problems like climate change, poverty and epidemics. Earlier this month, it put $10 million into companies that are looking for ways to tap the world’s geothermal energy. (See " Looking For Power, Google Goes To Hell.")

Dan Reicher, Google.org’s director of climate and energy, says cleaner electricity production will have an impact on the transportation sector, as plug-in electric vehicles become more popular. “As the grid gets greener, the cars get cleaner,” he says.

In the same vein, electric sports car manufacturer Tesla Motors is reaching out to new markets. The company is now developing a four-door sedan that’s in the $60,000 range--still out of reach for most Americans, but quite a drop from the company’s popular Tesla Roadster, which goes for about $109,000. (We can attest to its coolness after taking a spin.)

“The hardest thing is to say no to a company that changes things by a factor of two or a factor of four,” says John Gage, a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm. “We’re looking for companies that change things by a factor of 10 or a factor of 100.” Drool, drool, drool.

With smart money betting there's a gold mine in solving energy and climate solutions, smart politicians are betting a gold rush will naturally follow. Ritter's already staked his claim.