By Richard Martin, Contributing Editor

Of the politicians, businesspeople, and academics who gathered at the governor’s mansion on July 23, the most relieved by far had to be Chris Shapard, executive director of the brand-new  Colorado Cleantech Industry Organization.  Shapard has headed the fledgling industry organization, whose official kick-off was the occasion for the Denver reception, since last fall.

“It’s been a long road,” Shapard admitted after her brief opening remarks.

First conceived nearly a year ago, the CCIA seemed at first like a slam dunk: “When we first starting raising money back in September, everyone said ‘No problem!’” As the world economy came to a screeching halt, the road got tougher: some of the trade organization’s members are “on a payment plan,” Shapard said, but the CCIA, formed to lead and catalyze the renewable-energy industry at the heart of Colorado’s New Energy Economy, is now off the drawing board with more than 80 members and strong support from the Governor’s Energy Office, the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The emergence of the CCIA, said Gov. Bill Ritter, who has staked his political future on the renewable-energy sector becoming a major engine for Colorado’s economy, represents “a shared vision of what a 21st-century Colorado looks like.” Noting a recent McKinsey & Co. forecast that offered a continuing bleak outlook for the U.S. economy,

Ritter said that the consulting firm pinpointed two industries that will continue to grow in the next few years: healthcare and clean technology. Promoting the sector aggressively, Ritter added, “Will allow us to have an industry that will not only grow jobs, but help Colorado to emerge from the recession in a stronger and healthier way.”

Last week’s event capped a big month for Colorado’s clean technology sector. Despite an economy still lurching toward recovery and capital markets that remain virtually frozen, cleantech executives have seen encouraging developments this summer and remain surprisingly upbeat about the future of their industry.

That optimism was supported by the findings presented at the Cleantech Forum earlier this month in Denver. Jane Evenson of Evenson & Associates shared the results of her survey of several hundred clean-technology and renewable energy businesses based in the state, as part of the initial stage of the Colorado Cleantech Cluster Analysis, sponsored by Connected Organizations for a Responsible Economy.

Evenson’s survey offered the first really comprehensive, hard-data view of this rising business sector. Describing the composition of the state’s cleantech industry , she drew comparisons with the industry in other states, notably California, Massachusetts and Texas. The ongoing series of interviews with executives in cleantech companies will flesh out the initial findings, becoming part of a comprehensive report on the industry to be published in August.

That Colorado is home to one of the most vibrant and growing cleantech sectors in the country is apparent to its participants. However, speakers at the Cleantech Forum luncheon cautioned that renewable energy and its offshoots compose a still- nascent industry that has a long way to go to realize its backers’ visions.

Andre Pettigrew, executive director of Denver’s Office of Economic Development, lived through the Silicon Valley tech boom-and-bust of the 1990s and early 2000s, and he cautioned the audience of executives not to be complacent. Pettigrew said the state’s cleantech sector has a chance to rival what happened in California, when an ecosystem developed around information technology, creating thousands of jobs and huge fortunes while changing the world for the better. It won’t happen here, he emphasized, unless everyone involved — businesses, policymakers and researchers — redouble their efforts to push the sector forward.

“We’re doing pretty well as an industry, particularly given the current economy, but we need to redouble our efforts to get where we want to be,” said Pettigrew.

What’s needed, according to people like Trent Yang, director of the Transforming Energy and Markets program at CU’s Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, is a more sophisticated capital market for cleantech along with more top-tier management leadership.

The CCIA launch should help foster some of that leadership, as the presence of executives from several start-up companies at the kick-off event attested.

Steve Hane, CEO of Ampulse, a Golden-based company working on a revolutionary thin-film photovoltaic technology using crystalline silicon to improve energy conversion ratios in solar arrays, said the CCIA could help foster small companies like his, which doesn’t expect to have a product until 2010.

CLEANtricity Power, a Broomfield-based startup working on vertical axis wind turbines that can automatically adjust their pitch to varying wind conditions, is one of 12 finalists in the Clean Tech Open, a national business competition that will award a $250,000 purse along with access to Silicon Valley venture-capital firms. Like Ampulse, CLEANtricity is located in Northern Colorado partly because of the nexus of world-class research institutions, a supportive state government, and a business community that favors progressive technology companies, said co-founder Richard Smith. “The CCIA represents the coming together of all of those elements,” Smith added.

Summing up, veteran entrepreneur Douglas Schatz, who founded Advanced Energy in 1981 and is now heading two cleantech startups in addition to AE, said that Colorado is “becoming a magnet” for high-growth renewable-energy companies like his. “We’ve had all these startups in place, and now there’s a momentum around the sector” not found elsewhere, Schatz said in his remarks. “There’s so many different technology companies under development here, and they’re all trying to grow something that can change the way we generate and use energy. There’s a real vitality in Colorado.”

 That was just what CCIA director Chris Shapard wanted to hear.