With Contact, the Peloran gave us examples of many new technologies.  Some made our warships better.  But the Peloran have amazing knowledge of the life sciences and many of these have civilian applications.  We engineered new plants for New Antarctica, designed to reinforce the greenhouse effect of the world, and within a decade the planet began to warm.  It has become an amazingly Earth-like world in the decades since, and home to a major Alliance colony.