Clean technology includes recycling, renewable energy (wind power, solar power, biomass, hydropower, biofuels), information technology, green transportation, electric motors, green chemistry, lighting, Greywater, and many other appliances that are now more energy efficient. It is a means to create electricity and fuels, with a smaller environmental footprint and minimise pollution. To make green buildings, transport and infrastructure both more energy efficient and environmentally benign. Environmental finance is a method by which new clean technology projects that have proven that they are "additional" or "beyond business as usual" can obtain financing through the generation of carbon credits. A project that is developed with concern for climate change mitigation (such as a Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism project) is also known as a carbon project.

While there is no standard definition of "clean technology," it has been described by Clean Edge, a clean technology research firm, as "a diverse range of products, services, and processes that harness renewable materials and energy sources, dramatically reduce the use of natural resources, and cut or eliminate emissions and wastes." It notes that "Clean technologies are competitive with, if not superior to, their conventional counterparts. Many also offer significant additional benefits, notably their ability to improve the lives of those in both developed and developing countries". Many countries have developed clean tech representatives to speak about the countries problems some countries include Russia, Japan, and China.

Vinod Khosla (born 28 January 1955) is an Indian-born American businessman and venture capitalist. Khosla was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, where he served as its first CEO and Chairman in the early 1980s. In 1986, he became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where he remained through the early 2000s. In 2004 Khosla formed his own firm, Khosla Ventures, which focused on venture investments in various technology sectors, most notably clean technology.

He is a strong supporter of clean technology and said "If it doesn't scale, it doesn't matter. Most of what we talk about today—hybrid, biodiesel, ethanol, solar photovoltaics, geothermal—I believe are irrelevant to the scale of the problem."

Khosla's father was an officer in the Indian Army and was posted at New Delhi,India. He read about the founding of Intel in Electronic Engineering Times at the age of fourteen and this inspired him to pursue technology as a career.

Khosla went on to receive degrees from the IIT Delhi, India (Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering), Carnegie Mellon University (Masters in Biomedical Engineering), and Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA).

Elizabeth Evans May, OC, MP (born June 9, 1954) is an American-born Canadian Member of Parliament, environmentalist, writer, activist, lawyer, and the leader of the Green Party of Canada. She was the executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada from 1989 to 2006. She became a Canadian citizen in 1978.

May's permanent residence is in Sidney, British Columbia. Her family home is in Margaree Harbour, Cape Breton Island. On May 2, 2011, she became the first elected Green Party Member of Parliament in Canada, defeating the incumbent, Gary Lunn.

May was born in Hartford, Connecticut to a British father and American mother; she has a younger brother named Geoffrey. Her mother was a prominent anti-nuclear activist and one of the original founders of the peace group SANE, while her father was Assistant Vice President of Aetna Life and Casualty. May's godfather was actor Cliff Robertson.

May attended Renbrook School and the prestigious Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. Her family was rooted in the Welsh Congregationalist tradition of free thinking on religious beliefs.

Hermann Scheer (April 29, 1944 – October 14, 2010) was a Social Democrat member of the German Bundestag (Parliament), President of Eurosolar (The European Association for Renewable Energy) and General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy. In 1999, Scheer was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for his "indefatigable work for the promotion of solar energy worldwide".

Scheer believed that the continuation of current patterns of energy supply and use will be environmentally damaging, with renewable energy being the only realistic alternative. Scheer had concluded that it is technically and environmentally feasible to harness enough solar radiation to achieve a total replacement of the foclear (fossil/nuclear) energy system by a global renewable energy economy. The main obstacle to such a change is seen to be political, not technical or economic. In 1999 he was one of the initiators of the German feed-in tariffs that were the major source of the rise of renewable energies in Germany during the following years.