Khosla Ventures: Vinod Khosla's company has invested in 37 infotech companies and 53 clean-tech companies, including EcoMotors.
Image: Courtesy of EcoMotors
In Brief
- Radical innovation, not incremental improvement, is needed to make clean, efficient energy technologies that can compete, unsubsidized, in big markets.
- Mainstream technologies such as air conditioning and automobile engines may be the best targets for breakthroughs that change the energy game.
- More people with Ph.D.s in technical disciplines are needed to create true breakthroughs. Students are beginning to flock to these areas.
- A low-carbon-electricity standard, not renewable energy standards or cap and trade, would most encourage cleaner technologies, including fossil fuels.
More In This Article
Vinod khosla has become the most widely recognized investor in clean technologies—those that generate or save energy with the least environmental impact. He founded Khosla Ventures in 2004 to fund new companies, after being a long-time partner at the giant investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. His entrepreneurial roots stretch back to 1982, when he co-founded Sun Microsystems, which became a $7-billion workstation and software company. In a one-on-one dialogue, conducted before an audience of energy entrepreneurs and financiers at the recent GoingGreen conference in San Francisco, Scientific American’s Mark Fischetti asked Khosla (an adviser to the magazine) to assess, with his venture capitalist’s eye, which new energy innovations are most likely to succeed and why. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow.
Scientific American: One of your mantras as an investor is: If it doesn’t scale, it doesn’t matter. How are clean technologies doing in this regard?
This article was originally published with the title In Search of the Radical Solution.
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6 Comments
Add CommentThis article is incomplete. Everything after the first question is missing. I would like to read the full article. Please re-post it after the omission has been remedied. Thanks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt this very moment, Man Kind has the Science and Technology to immediately stop the progression of any known disease! To have your vehicle fully operational from the energy (AURA) of the body! The dog and cat to keep the home fires burning and there is enough aura produced from gramps old bones as to run a factory!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNew technology may not be necessary. For over a hundred years, vehicles were run by pyrolysing biomass to produce hydrogen and biochar. The hydrogen is, unlike industrial hydrogen, a non-polluting energy source, and the biochar can be converted into carbon-neutral biofuels. (See www.eprida.com). All that is required is for new investment to bring the technology up to date. Power plants and refineries can use the same technology!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCold fusion is the answer. Cold fusion is still being researched. Visit the TV show "60 Minutes" website at CBS.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCold fusion using fullerene to squeeze heavy hydrogen is one method. Heavy hydrogen can be shot into the fullerene molecules, which are hollow, so that the incredible strength of the fullerene molecules can apply pressure to the heavy hydrogen. Extreme pressure for a long time results is cold fusion of hydrogen.
Cold fusion is possible because at extreme pressure heavy hydrogen reacts. The method avoids the effects of high temperature that prevent other fusion processes from being practical.
How can I get a transcript of:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn Search of the Radical Solution: A Q&A with Venture Capitalist Vinod Khosla on New Energy Technology
The greatest energy payoffs, says investor Vinod Khosla, will come from fundamentally reinventing mainstream technologies
Vinod is not convincing as a backer of disruptive technology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSun was a conservative company that took demand for a Berkeley Unix based operating system and sold it through a great sales and marketing effort. In fact the first Motorola 68k based systems failed much of the time.
Sun was well funded by Stanford rich kids. The tech was never disruptive but sometimes very good like Java.
Vinod's staff of Indian graduate students clearly worship him and measure new proposals just like they were taught in Bschool. Let's not forget all of the disruptive new industries that have come out of Bschool..... are we counting yet?
Bean Counters don't do disruptive that takes cojones.
To be sure, Vinod counts.