Solar power might be the star of the cleantech industry right now, but water technologies are the prot??g??s eagerly awaiting their turn in the spotlight, industry watchers said Wednesday at the Clean-Tech Investor Summit in Rancho Mirage, California.

"One in five people around the globe lack access to safe drinking water," said Ira Ehrenpreis, a general partner at Technology Partners, a Palo Alto, California-based venture capital firm that invests in new water technologies. "When we sit at this conference in 10 years, water is going to be commanding as much, if not more, attention [as solar]."

The water industry is already a $365-billion global market, and it is dominated by large companies using costly technologies unfeasible for large-scale use.

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