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With 2010 finally behind us, and a full year of data to play with, it appears that green technology investments are firmly shifting from the supply side of the equation to the demand side. In other words, solar and wind power were on the outs last year, and energy efficiency was the up-and-comer.

That’s the conclusion I draw in my weekly update at GigaOm Pro (subscription required), and while it may not come as a surprise to industry watchers, it’s nice to have some numbers to back it up. Although solar startups continued to draw the most money in venture capital investment last year, energy efficiency startups garnered

greennumbers green technology investments investments supply demand energy efficiency

Energy efficiency is THE core climate solution. It's the biggest low-carbon resource by far. "Efficiency Works" [PDF], a major new report by Bracken Hendricks, Bill Campbell, and Pen Goodale, finds that a straightforward set of policies aimed at upgrading just 40 percent of the residential and commercial building stock in the United States would:

Create 625,000 sustained full-time jobs over a decade.
Spark $500 billion in new investments to upgrade 50 million homes and office buildings.
Generate as much as $64 billion a year in cost savings for U.S. ratepayers, freeing consumers to spend their money in more productive ways.

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The smart grid has been a lumbering but steady and inevitable presence in the utility industry, with a speedy uptake in the number of start-ups interested in creating everything from energy storage technology to user dashboards for home energy consumption and a somewhat slower uptake in the number of smart grid pilot projects popping up nationwide. Less than two years ago it was expected to grow to at least $65 billion by 2013. Cisco has identified at least $20 billion in potential business opportunities around the grid, which the company says will be bigger than the Internet, and $3.4 billion of stimulus money was to be dished out to 100 projects. So why the projection from Pike Research that the spending will top off at $35 billion by 2013?

greennumbers smart grid investments spending

public opinion data on global warming also points in one direction: Americans support investments in clean energy, and want action to reduce global warming pollution. Poll after poll finds majorities support these measures, despite the worst economy in eighty years, and $100 million and growing of big oil and coal advocacy to defeat clean energy and global warming legislation.

global warming clean energy investments

Global investors representing $13 trillion in assets called on the United States and other countries on Thursday to adopt policies to fight climate change they said would unleash a potential flood of private money into renewable and efficient energy.

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Global investment in clean energy from April to June was less than the same period last year, and at $33 billion barely half the last quarter of 2007, initial NEF figures show.

clean energy green energy investments