It is blisteringly hot and the sunlight is bouncing off the sparkling blue water as Faroukh Mia picks up his mobile. He needs to know the latest prices for his main product line.

Faroukh is not, as you might imagine, a businessman sitting by a pool in Dubai. He is floating in a tiny fishing boat in the Bay of Bengal, and he wants to know where to land his catch to secure the best price of the day.

Like millions of his countrymen in low-lying Bangladesh, Faroukh and his family are acutely at risk from rising sea levels. As such, they are often portrayed by the media as the helpless victims of impending climate disaster. But that misses half the story. They are also entrepreneurs, exploiting new technology sold to them by one of Bangladesh’s most dynamic businesses.

Faroukh lives miles from the nearest mains power. His mobile, like the lights in his home and in his wife’s sewing workshop, are charged by solar electricity, courtesy of a small photovoltaic (PV) panel attached to the roof of his house. It was sold to him by Grameen Shakti (‘village energy’), an offshoot of the hugely successful Grameen Bank.

Thanks to a simple micro-credit system, even poor families like Faroukh’s can afford the panels. Savings on the smoky, unreliable kerosene lanterns easily cover the monthly repayments. The solar lamps mean Faroukh’s family can work into the evenings, more than doubling their income, while the phone plugs them into the wider economy in a way that would have been unimaginable ten years ago.

Grameen Shakti – winner of an outstanding achievement prize in the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy – has now installed nearly 200,000 solar home systems across Bangladesh, and confidently expects to hit one million by 2015. With over 30 million families marooned ‘off grid’ in Bangladesh alone, the potential for future growth is enormous.

Many such ‘climate entrepreneurs’ are responding creatively to rising energy prices and the need to cut carbon emissions. Their ventures range from meeting the needs of the world’s poorest to finding sustainable ways of indulging more luxurious appetites.

The FT’s Climate Change Challenge seeks to encourage projects with just this combination of creativity, green innovation and hard-headed business sense. It aims to help speed their route to market by providing publicity and a $75,000 prize to allow the winner to develop their idea.

Many of these new climate entrepreneurs tap into growing concerns over energy security. In the UK, renewable energy supplier Ecotricity’s ‘Merchant Wind Power’ service provides onsite turbines to businesses such as industrial and retail parks. Started in a Cotswold caravan by rock star look-alike Dale Vince, Ecotricity is tapping into a growing desire among companies for energy independence. Onsite power not only gives them a sense of control – it also offers a potential revenue stream via the sale of electricity back into the grid. And there is far less local opposition to turbines placed in car parks than those in beauty spots.

At the household level, the ‘security plus revenue’ logic favours PV-supplier Solar Century, too. The capital costs – comfortably into five figures for a typical domestic installation – may seem off-putting. But thanks to the government’s belated adoption of the feed-in tariff, households generating their own power will soon find it a lot easier to sell the surplus. A PV array effectively turns a home into a power plant, which brings the beguiling prospect of seeing an electricity cheque, rather than a bill, flop onto the doormat every month.

Sparks are taking to the road, too. While the world’s auto giants were falling over themselves in the search for the holy grail of hydrogen power, it was left to the minnows to pursue what’s fast emerging as a more promising future for green motoring: the electric car. Chetan Maini’s Bangalore-based REVA company is behind the quirky G-Wiz, which has quickly found a niche for itself in London’s congestion zone. At around £7,000, the price is low and the running cost lower. The money spent recharging would translate to a fuel economy rate of 600 miles per gallon.

REVA’s main electric rival, the fluffily-named NICE Car Company (it actually stands for ‘No Internal Combustion Engine’) is a start-up, too. It was launched in 2006 by Evert Geursten and Julian Wilford, formerly of Lotus, which might explain why some of its models, like the forthcoming Tazzari ZERO, are sleeker than the boxily earnest G-Wiz.

For those unable to stomach the slightest whiff of compromise behind the wheel, there is California’s Tesla Roadster – the brainchild of PayPal millionaire Elon Musk. The company has had its ups and downs, but fresh financing means it should soon be rolling out its fabulously sleek (and extremely expensive) Lotus Elise-lookalike. The car promises an acceleration of 0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds, dispelling once and for all the notion that green can’t be fast.

And there is money to be made in sharing, rather than selling, cars. Streetcar is one of a number of ‘car clubs’ taking off in Britain’s major cities. The cars are parked in 700 locations across London. They are bookable via text message, and accessible with a smartcard issued to every member. A lot less hassle than car hire, says Streetcar, and at around £3.95 an hour significantly cheaper, too.

The author is editor of Forum for the Future’s magazine, Green Futures