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From making biofuels out of algae to producing concrete that absorbs carbon dioxide, our comprehensive has it all on the sectors, businesses and ideas at the forefront of the clean technonlogy revolution. To be on the cleantech list, companies must be independent, for-profit and not listed on any major stock exchange.

This is the second year of the Cleantech 100, first published in 2009 as a joint venture between the Guardian and the Cleantech Group as a true representation of global innovation and private company creation.

This year, we asked: which 100 of today's private cleantech companies are the most likely to make the most significant market impact over the next 5-10 years? Hundreds of worldwide cleantech experts – including companies themselves – nominated the list, which also included so-called "passive" nominations and validations derived from analysing market data, taking votes of confidence in a company's ability to achieve high growth and high-market impact from market transactions such as investment rounds, and major customer and partnership announcements.

To be on the list, companies must be independent, for-profit, cleantech companies that are not listed on any major stock exchange.

In 2010, 4,616 nominations were received from 3,260 unique sources, resulting in a longlist of 3,138 companies. A weighting and filter system was then applied to collate the results, score each company, and reduce the candidates to a shortlist of 218 companies to present to an expert advisory panel in a second stage of the process. Here members of the expert panel combine their votes with scores carried through from the first stage. Ultimately firms are scored on three key criteria: their innovation, their market's size and growth, and the company's ability and resources to execute its technology. The result is this authoritative guide to the best 100 companies in cleantech.

Clearly, there are many, fine companies who are not on the 2010 list. They may be waiting to be discovered, they may be out of favour this year for whatever reason or they may simply have just missed the cut. Only so many companies can be on the list.

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