In 1969, the Rolling Stones were young and oil was just over 3 bucks a barrel.

That was the year the Altamont Speedway Music Festival ended in violence, as chronicled in the film Gimme Shelter.

Within five years, crude prices tripled in the first Middle Eastern oil shock, and windmill construction started on the hilltops of Altamont Pass, just east of the San Francisco Bay area.

Today, Altamont Pass is home to the world's largest cluster of wind turbines, and California is an international market leader because of the steps state leaders took three decades ago.

Shifting Breezes in California Wind Energy

All over California, the 1970s energy crisis is in your face. Mammoth solar panels sit dormant on the roof of my brother's suburban Los Angeles apartment. They're relics of America's first steps towards energy independence, before OPEC lulled us back into crude complacency.

But with $100 oil, today's power crunch is apparent, too, so the California Legislature is working on removing zoning obstacles that prevent small-scale wind turbine construction for households and businesses.

Along with large-scale wind farms like Altamont, turbines that produce a couple hundred kilowatt-hours per day contribute a great deal to reducing the 10,000 kw/h per year energy footprint of an average American household.

The Sunshine State, hit by rolling blackouts in the first years of the 21^st century, is amping up its renewable energy initiatives on every level, putting it in league with world wind power leaders like Germany (22 gigawatts installed) and Spain (15GW).

Now, California's economy is so big that if measured as a country, it would be the seventh-richest in the world, so movements in the state's energy mix can push new technologies--and companies that develop them--to the forefront.

The potential there is huge, because guess what lies just to the southwest of Altamont?

Silicon Valley.

Huge Potential for California Wind Energy CleanTech

The following map from the American Wind Energy Association shows isolated streaks of excellent natural wind energy potential in California:

But California has another enviable resource to tap in Silicon Valley: Cleantech.

Investors' Fortune in California Cleantech 

As local tech venture capitalist Adam Grosser told the Economist magazine recently, "There is an unbelievable migration of talent from traditional technology to clean technology."

Grosser, a partner at large VC fund Foundation Capital, continued to say that these techies have "their social conscience energized, and they believe there is a lot of money to be made."

These geniuses and serial entrepreneurs don't just believe there is a fortune in clean energy technology like wind... They know it.

In 2007, just five European utility companies spent about $15 billion on acquisitions of renewable energy companies, delivering a boatload to the financiers and stock investors of their buyout targets.

Now remember California's country-sized economy, and consider that California only ranks at #17 in the AWEA's top 20 list of states with wind energy potential.

That means that developments like the 4.5 gigawatts planned this year by Southern California Edison will give way to even more ambitious projects outside of the state, if and when Silicon Valley start-ups and renewables-hungry utilities continue the international trends already in motion.

Regards,

Sam Hopkins

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