While much of the business community’s enthusiasm has been curbed by 2010’s market instability, political disquiet and austerity measures, the fight against the harmful effects of climate change continues unabated. If anything, investor frugality and capital elusiveness have amplified the need to do more.

It is a narrative that has been illustrated in this year’s Zayed Future Energy Prize, which has received more than 390 submissions – a 30% increase on last year – and 959 nominations from 69 countries. The winner, who will be announced on 18 January in Abu Dhabi, will receive a grand prize of $1.5m, and up to two finalists $350,000 each.

When it comes to sustainable and renewable-energy solutions, the prize offers a vital insight into the next big thing in innovation, performance and leadership. Take former entrant Makani Power, now capturing imaginations with a bid to harness wind power 500m off the ground using robotic, kite-like wings.

The Google-backed, California-based start-up’s unique approach involves attaching turbine-mounted rigid wings to a ground station via a tether with an electrically conductive core. Steering employs the same physics as an aircraft under autonomous computer control.

Makani Power CEO Corwin Hardham anticipates going to market in 2015 with a one-megawatt airborne wind turbine that will use 80% less material than its conventional, terrestrially-rooted counterpart and generate 40% cheaper energy, conservatively estimated to reach price parity with coal.

Another alumnus bound to make a splash in 2011 is Marine Current Turbines. Boasting the world’s largest and most powerful tidal turbine, the company hopes to capitalise on vast marine energy resources in the UK, including Scotland’s Pentland Firth, described as the Saudi Arabia of tidal power.

“This is no longer pie-in-the-sky stuff,” says the company’s managing director, Martin Wright. “We have an opportunity to exploit this now if we get some resources behind it. We’ve got a device that says now is the time.”

Elsewhere, the solar sector appears to have found a new star in the shape of concentrated photovoltaic technology (CPV), which uses lenses or mirrors to magnify the sun’s energy.

Amonix, one of the nascent technology’s front-runners, made a huge statement of intent in April when it secured $129.4m in a financing round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in one of the largest cleantech deals of the year.

CEO Brian Robertson claims that because his company’s technology uses no water during power production and is more economic in terms of land usage, it can produce more energy per acre than any other solar-powered method. “It is the best choice for solar-power generation in sunny and dry climates,” he says.

Agriculture, often maligned as a technological laggard, is also getting its cleantech groove on (see page 39) with R&D starting to yield futuristic solutions such as smart irrigation systems, biological pest-control agents, microbial inoculants for soil, metagenomics and vertical/urban farming projects.

Ostensibly more mundane, but certainly no less resonant, is the work of diversified building materials manufacturer Serious Materials. In the hands of this Californian start-up, dour, run-of-the-mill products like windows and drywall are dragged towards the cutting edge to become sexy, hi-tech, climate solution salves.

With a business model inspired by Apple, Serious Materials is putting a rocket up the backside of an industry where R&D moves, if it moves at all, at a glacial speed. As its founder and CEO Kevin Surace says: “We have a disruptive business model, a disruptive sales model, disruptive marketing, messaging and disruptive products.”