Plenty magazine has announced its picks for the Plenty 20: twenty pioneering businesses that have made significant environmental advances, as well as twenty dynamic individuals dedicated to greening the planet. The magazine's staff has also put together a list of the ten ideas they think will take green to the next level in 2009. The Plenty 20 Businesses are:

1. A123 Systems
2. Applied Materials
3. Arup
4. Bon Appétit Management Company
5. Coskata
6. Environmental Working Group
7. Forest Stewardship Council
8. Google
9. Home Depot
10. Iberdrola
11. IBM
12. Innovest Strategic Value Advisors
13. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
14. Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
15. Nike
16. Patagonia
17. Pizza Fusion
18. RecycleBank
19. Swiss Re
20. TransFair USA

The Plenty 20 People are:

1. Al Gore
2. Andrew Revkin
3. Charles Moore
4. David de Rothschild
5. Fred Krupp
6. Frederick Kirschenmann
7. Heidi Cullen
8. James Hansen
9. Joe Lovett
10. Kathleen Sebelius
11. Kevin Wall
12. Lester Brown
13. Maude Barlow
14. Michael Pollan
15. Mindy Lubber
16. Nicholas Negroponte
17. Peter Diamandis
18. Van Jones
19. Vinod Khosla
20. William McDonough & Michael Braungart

The Plenty 20 Ideas are:

1. Carbon Labels
2. Closing the Loop
3. Economic Energy Efficiency
4. Green Affordable Housing
5. Green-Collar Jobs
6. Green Media
7. Intentional Communities
8. Living Catalogs
9. Nature Education
10. Skyscraper Farms

More in-depth coverage of all of the Plenty 20 picks will be available in the October/November issue of Plenty Magazine as well as online. I wouldn't necessarily count the names on either the Plenty 20 Business or People lists as huge surprises — every name on that list is known for some impressive achievements in the green arena.

But the Plenty 20 Ideas list is extremely interesting: while green-collar jobs have already made some news, the rest haven't attracted too much attention. That's going to change very soon, and 2009 is the year for it. There's no question that issues like green affordable housing are going to come up in the next year. Even from a purely economic sense, the question of making housing more affordable by increasing energy efficiency is already starting to get some ink.

Image — Plenty