Cleantech Group, one of the largest cleantech investment firms in the world, argues in an article today that “2010 is the year when the realisation that we are already engaged in a new ‘space race’ will become the widely accepted wisdom internationally.”  It cites our report, “Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant.”

Cleantech innovation has gone global in a way and at a speed that we did not see in prior technology waves; the IT, industrial, gunpowder, mathematics revolutions were all mentioned as cases in point. And whilst the West, especially the U.S., dominates statistics like the location of cleantech companies receiving the most venture capital, this proxy for innovation may prove to no longer stand up very well in the 2010s.

A recent report issued in the U.S., Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant, makes a similar point. Asia’s rising clean technology tigers—China, Japan, and South Korea—have already passed the United States in the production of virtually all clean energy technologies, and over the next 5 years, the report says, governments of these nations will out-invest the United States three-to-one in these sectors.

The new space race is truly on, and Europe and the U.S. better start paying full attention.