Iberdrola, Spain's second-largest utility, can provide the extra power without the emissions, thanks to its wind farms and nuclear power plants. The utility now owns all or part of six nuclear power plants in Spain. And Iberdrola, the world's largest operator of wind farms, projects better than 55% growth in renewable generating capacity by 2009. The company, which has an 11% share of the electricity market in Brazil and is the largest independent generator in Mexico, has recently announced wind-farm deals in Turkey, Portugal and Eastern Europe.

The company's slogan should be, "Bringing modern retail banking to a developing India." As of March 31, 2006, Icici Bank had a network of more than 614 branches and 2,200 ATMs across India. In the quarter that ended Sept. 30, savings deposits grew by 86% from the same quarter in 2005, and retail loans grew by 57%. The growth wasn't limited to urban areas, either; rural credit grew by 75%. The company is busy adding new financial products such as life and general insurance to sell to this customer base. The company's life insurance venture saw 61% year-to-year growth and general insurance grew by 50%.

Kookmin Bank is a safe way to buy China's growth -- if the company can complete its acquisition of Korea Exchange Bank in 2007. The deal would transform Kookmin, the largest retail bank and lender in Korea, into the country's dominant bank for foreign exchange and the financing of foreign trade.

Build it and they will come -- if you've got enough cement for all those new buildings going up in the developing world. The French company Lafarge has been investing heavily to increase capacity in China and India. With Asia representing just 10% of sales in 2005, that expansion won't be enough to stop sales growth at Lafarge from slowing from 14.9% in the first half of 2006 to 5.2% in the second half of the year, thanks to the slowdown in the U.S. housing market, according to projections by investment bank Natexis Bleichroeder. But the company's cost-cutting efforts look successful enough -- with projected margins set to increase to 21.7% in 2006 and 22% in 2007 from 20.8% in 2005 -- that Natexis Bleichroeder projects a 10% increase in profit for the company in 2007.

Lenovo Group, which bought the IBM PC business in 2005, is still struggling to contain costs and to get traction in the U.S. market. But this Chinese company, called Legend until it began the overseas expansion that has taken it to No. 3 in the PC market, is a force in Asia. In the U.S. PC market, Lenovo Group recently dropped out of the top five, but the company's market share in Asia outside of Japan continues to climb, reaching 21% in the September 2006 quarter from 19.9% in the previous quarter. That's not all in China, either. The company has recently launched a major sales effort in India, the world's fastest-growing PC market, using Bollywood stars and cricket players.

You may not know the Italian company, but you certainly know its brands. Luxottica sells glasses and sunglasses under its own brands (such as Ray-Ban) or licensed brands (such as Versace, Chanel and Prada) through a network of branded stores such as LensCrafters in the United States -- and as of Sept. 21 in China, too. The Beijing store that opened that day is the first of a projected 90 LensCrafters stores in China. Add that to the company's recent acquisitions of Modern Sight Optics (28 stores in Shanghai), Minglong (113 stores in Guangdong) and Xueliang (79 stores in Beijing), and you're talking about some hefty penetration into the fast-growing Chinese market.

As a result of Japan's decade-long economic stagnation in the 1990s, the country's banks pretty much missed out on the consumer-finance revolution that transformed banking in the U.S. during that period. Now that bank balance sheets have been restored to health and consumers aren't worried about economic collapse, big banks like Mitsubishi UFJ are striving to make up for lost time.

If you want to buy a stake in the changing eating habits of the world -- for good and ill -- Nestle is your stock. The Swiss company, the largest food company in the world, gets 21% of its revenue from Asia, Africa and Oceania and 37% from its European home market. Asia, Africa and Oceania also compose the company's fastest growing market, with an organic (that means after correcting for the effect of acquisitions and sales of existing businesses) revenue increase of 7.4% in the first nine months of 2006 vs. 2.1% organic growth in Europe.