The year 2010 will likely be remembered for the rebirth of electric vehicles -- not just the vaunted Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, and not even the pricey Tesla, but dozens of other brands, large and small, that came into public view. And their entrance has spurred a small but growing ecosystem of corporate alliances seeking to tap into the new opportunities.

Some of these alliances are predictable -- for example, announcements by Hertz and Enterprise to add EVs to their rental fleets. Others brought together large players with smaller ones -- a partnership by Better Place and GE to build a battery recharging infrastructure, for example, or Panasonic's investment in Tesla, allowing the former to supply lithium-ion batteries to the latter, while jointly they work on next-gen battery cells. Meanwhile, a global alliance chaired by Prince Albert of Monaco set a target of getting 1 million more electric vehicles on the road in the next five years than automakers have planned to bring to market. These companies and public agencies join with other early adopters, such as GE, which pledged to buy 25,000 electric vehicles over the next five years for its own fleet, as well as for customers in its fleet management business.

But the greening of transport goes well beyond vehicles. Greener technologies and practices are emerging for a raft of transportation types on land, sea, and air.

Ocean-going vessels, the means by which twothirds of the goods purchased by U.S. consumers arrive on American shores, have long been an environmental problem. While ocean-going vessels worldwide account for just 2 to 3 percent of global fossil-fuel consumption, they are responsible for 14 percent of the nitrogen emissions from fossil fuels and 16 percent of all sulfur emissions from petroleum, according to a study by Carnegie Mellon University. One reason: Cargo ships run on "bunker fuel," the dirtiest, cheapest product that remains once gas and other high-grade fuels have been refined from crude oil.