The current U.S. versus non-U.S. export split for clean technology is 56% to the U.S. and 44% to the non-U.S. The forecast by the companies for that moving forward is for it to actually become half and half non-U.S. and U.S., and for the share of emerging markets to grow significantly. At the moment, Europe is the dominant non-U.S. market. As you say, these are not hewers of wood and drawers of water. These are companies selling to Germany and selling to the U.K. These are highly competitive, difficult markets, and our companies are winning projects there.
I was in Mexico earlier last week. In emerging markets there's a great openness to buying from Canada, and many opportunities. Waste-to-energy is a good one. For leaks of various kinds, whether it's methane at Pemex or energy leaks at the major Coca-Cola bottler, which is a multi-billion dollar industry, we have a very good brand, and there are markets that are quite dynamic.
I would say that Asia is an area where we probably need to think some more, because there are still concerns regarding intellectual property in China. If you're investing a billion dollars a year in IP, you should be concerned about it.
The average number of countries where companies are applying for patents is 11. There's a very interesting rule of thumb. For a $10-billion industry, 10% of revenue, or $1 billion, is invested in R and D. Of that, 10% is invested in IP protection. That is invested for 11 patents, on average, per company. It obviously varies according to the type of sector you're in.