To appreciate The Clean Tech Revolution, you have to have not read Worldchanging — or really, most eco-blogs and mags — at all for the last couple years.

Written by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder — both from a research and publishing firm called Clean Edge — The Clean Tech Revolution’s ’bout making money from “any product, service, or process that delivers value using limited or zero nonrenewable resources and/or creates significantly less waste than conventional offerings” — basically anything considered green tech — solar and windpower, biofuels, hybrid technology, and the like.

The Clean Tech Revolution has its own gimmick: The “six C’s” — costs, capital, competition, China, consumers, climate — which the authors point to as the driving forces behind the clean tech revolution. Unfortunately, the book suffers from its old-fashioned, printed-and-bound book medium. Even if Worldchanging’s the only blog you read, the vast majority of the info contained in this book won’t exactly be news to you. Is the fact that solar, wind power, biofuels, green buildings and cars are catching on still news to some people? The wind people alone just had a huge, 5-day conference attended by thousands….

The advice in this book’s more a reportage on what’s been hot news, investment-wise, as opposed to what’s about to become hot.

Still, the book does its best to market itself as hip and new, with sidebars titled “Breakthrough Opportunity” showing up every few pages. Each chapter ends with a “Ten to Watch” section, with brief blurbs about companies poised to make money — which might be a hint to investors reading the book that they’ve gotten to the game late, though perhaps not too late.

The Clean Tech Revolution actually gets creepy when it starts talking about clean water — citing how “billions of people live far from clean, portable sources of water, as regional supplies dry up” — then frames this scarcity as potential for big money. I’m all for innovative tech that’ll bring clean water to people, and I’d hope that the innovators will be rewarded for their work. But access to clean water should never depend on the promise of corporate profit –

The Clean Tech Revolution hits bookstores today.

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