Monday, a NYC investment banker I’m know began negotiations with three Slovenian scientists who may have invented the world’s most efficient street lamp. Thursday evening, my wife and I made Chicken Marbella for a brilliant young Indian/Brit banker who searches the globe looking to spend millions of pounds on cleantech and products like the Slovenians’ street lamps.

Somewhere after the chicken and a bottle of pinot noir, the conversation with the Brit shifted from cricket and soccer to the Slovenians. Soon the ideas bounced across the globe, and all around the cleantech industry from biomass fuel generation to smart grids, from peak load management to zero energy homes. All of them part of the biggest, most powerful megatrend in human history.

Since I own a mechanical engineering firm that works in the energy efficiency and cleantech industries, I am deep into this subject, which a few perceptive social-economists are referring to as the Third Industrial Revolution. Not to get too pedagogical, but industrial revolutions occur at the nexus between new communication technology and new energy generating technologies. The first was the nexus between the printing press and the steam engine, the second occurred in the later part of the 19th century with the invention of analog communications, and carbon-based energy generation. The 3rd IR is at our doorstep with the nexus of the Internet and renewable energy and smart grid distribution.

What does any of this have to do with making money and trading stocks? Well, if someone had told you in the 1970s that the world was about to enter the information technology era, and that maybe you should buy a few shares of those new companies with odd names like Microsoft and Apple, would you have figured out a way to make a buck? If not, then gardening may be a better fit than trading.

Just to give you some context. California’s 2010-2013 energy efficiency cycle is worth $3.6 billion. New York launched its own effort this year with a $1.5 billion initial cycle. The Feds poured about $250 billion into the energy efficiency and cleantech industries as part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act