As a result, filling up an SUV can cost $100 nowadays. Crude-oil prices have jumped 600% since 1999, and gasoline prices have soared. Two well-publicized developments underlie the growing interest in alternative energy. 'They have no intention of accepting inferior returns.' Venture capitalists and other large investors who are pouring money into green enterprises aren't doing it for charitable purposes, Peck says. Green power is a premium-priced product, and it's still relatively scarce. Investing in alternative-energy stocks or specialized green funds, he says, isn't like buying shares of chip makers, telecommunications-equipment producers and Internet companies - sectors in which product prices trend downward. Take Christopher Peck, a financial adviser in Windsor, Cal., with the aptly named Natural Investment Services. The scarcity factorД«ut there are also plenty of pros who believe that green investing is the next big thing. After all, the same kind of can't-miss thinking impoverished millions of investors who were sure that buying highflying Internet stocks was akin to minting money. It's another thing to actually make good money. 'You can make money at this.'Дў5 Stocks to Invest in a Cleaner World Five Green Up-And-ComersД«ut it's one thing for a number of well-meaning individuals to glom onto a powerful investment theme that - pardon the expression - has the wind at its back. Wyly, a Los Angeles resident whose father, Sam, made a fortune in software, lives in a solar-powered house and drives a car that runs on biodiesel fuel, but she's hard-nosed about finances. They're investing in environmentally friendly stocks - either directly or through funds - to make money. These four people, all young, educated and sincere, haven't gone green just because they're idealists.

The next big thing to invest in