When Jeffrey McDermott flies from New York to San Francisco for business this week, he will pack up to 20 meetings into three days rather than fly back and forth between the two cities more frequently. At the meetings, he will hand out stapled reports rather than the glossy, bound versions usually favoured by corporates. When it comes to water, his will be tap, not bottled.

Having spent two years planning Greentech Capital Advisors, the first investment bank focused solely on the alternative energy and clean technology markets, Mr McDermott has thought out every detail of his venture, including the “really small” carbon footprint of its Manhattan offices.

The 50-year-old banker — most recently the global co-head of investment banking at UBS — reckons that he timed the June 30 launch of his green boutique bank well. There is an eco-friendly President in the White House. The Senate is considering the Clean Energy and Security Act, which would introduce emissions trading to America for the first time. And President Obama’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act will provide $65 billion for clean energy research, companies and projects and a further $11 billion to modernise the country’s electricity grid.

Furthermore, individual states are stepping up their green game. For example, California has decreed that by 2020 a third of the electricity used in the state must be generated from a renewable source.

Americans, it seems, still smarting from last year’s record oil price that made their gas-guzzling SUVs expensive to run, are ready to consider change. According to Mr McDermott, there has been a “sea change in attitudes . . . A recent Gallup poll said overwhelmingly that we believe we have an impact on climate change and that we have a responsibility to do something about it. In Europe there’s been a great awareness of our impact on the environment, but that’s just dawning in America now.”

All of this adds up to a business opportunity. Companies in the finite energy fields will need advice on how to adapt to the tougher environmental regulations, while green companies will need to work out how to apply and best use President Obama’s energy stimulus funds. Continually improving technology will mean regular expansion at many businesses. Plus there will be demand for the usual advisory work, such as access to capital and mergers and acquisitions.

“We’re bulge-bracket bankers that have the same comprehensive skill set as the big banks, but we’re all together so we can deliver it in a team fashion,” Mr McDermott said. “If you need a whole solution, it’s hard to get that from the large banks.”

He picked his team from Wall Street’s behemoths: Robert Schultz, a former chief operating officer at Morgan Stanley Fund Services, is Greentech’s chief operating officer, Timothy Vincent, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, will run Greentech’s project finance business; and Michael Molnar, previously Goldman Sachs’ lead alternative energy and coals equity analyst, will carry out advisory work. Craig Wellen, a power and utilities banker from Citigroup, Andrew de Pass, founder and former head of Citigroup’s sustainable development investments (SDI) business, and Olav Junttila, one of Mr de Pass’s SDI colleagues, round out the Greentech team.

Mr Molnar, a self-confessed energy nerd — “On my bookshelf, half of the books are on energy because it’s such a dynamic space” — gave up his job at Wall Street’s most successful bank because he wanted to work with industry leaders of the future. “If you’re dealing with smaller companies on the edge of a steep growth trajectory, you can help them in a really material way that’s difficult to do in a bigger company,” he said. “I really believe that we’re working with some companies that will grow to be quite big and we have the opportunity to add value.”

Mr McDermott is similarly enthusiastic about the issues in which Greentech specialises. The father of four recounts advising his 14-year-old son, who had expressed an interest in working on Wall Street, that some of the best career opportunities were likely to be found in the green space.

“It was as I was having that conversation with him that I thought: ‘Wow, I should really think about that,’ ” he said. So Mr McDermott set about creating Greentech, “We’re all focused on this because we believe that climate change is a serious issue and sustainability is a challenge that our children and grandchildren will face.”

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