As oil becomes a more expensive source of energy, only the present administration ignores the market forces that make alternative, renewable sources more viable, to say nothing of the potential consequences of introducing increasing amounts of carbon into our atmosphere. Meanwhile, scientists, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investment banks and leaders from around the world seek to harness the original source of all the energy petroleum yields (in fact, the ultimate source of all energy on this planet), the sun. These aren’t home-brew, utopian dilettantes, either, I’m talking about would-be Rockefellers who see financial opportunity in the confluence of higher oil prices, climate change and the possibility of government regulation in the form of carbon taxes. These are people I will probably one day decry and demonstrate against as agents of “Big Sun,” but at least I’ll still have the energy to do it. Big Sun will outlast us all!

Todd Woody, who blogs on the environment and technology as “Green Wombat” had a comprehensive survey of the state of the solar industry in Business 2.0 Magazine last week, “Big Solar’s day in the sun.” It’s a lot more difficult to be dismissive of what we now call “alternative” energy sources when you read about the players involved and the systems in place in the current (pun intended) solar economy.

This is not Jimmy Carter’s energy crisis, when government subsidies ran ahead of market realities and launched a thousand solar projects that never saw the light of day. Their rusting hulks can still be seen scattered around the test fields: 1970s-vintage solar dishes, a 200-foot solar tower, parabolic mirrors surrounded by the detritus of bygone experiments.

This is the real deal. This is industrial-strength solar energy, sold to public utilities in 20-year contracts measured in gigawatts. Stirling Energy Systems of Phoenix, whose giant flowers are gleaming in the New Mexico sun, has signed agreements to provide up to 900 megawatts of solar energy to San Diego Gas & Electric (Charts, Fortune 500) and another 850 megawatts to Southern California Edison (Charts, Fortune 500).

That’s nearly six times the utility-scale solar power being produced in the United States today.

With all of the different players and technologies competing in the marketplace, how can you expect failure—unless of course, you lack faith in capitalism? Still, as Senator Kerry suggested in his speech to the Press Club last week, I wouldn’t mind seeing some small fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars in profits the oil industry has enjoyed lately put into the development of post-petroleum energy. For decades, oil companies have benefitted from the oil depletion allowance, drilling cost deduction, enhanced oil recovery credit and other production incentives worth billions. Surely a little bit of that could go instead to what must come next.