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Vinod Khosla: Where Energy, Technology and the Environment Meet
Vinod Khosla- When it comes to funding innovation, regardless of its high cost or probability of failure, Vinod Khosla is the Silicon Valley entrepreneur eager to take it on.
- Under the banner of Khosla Ventures, a firm he founded in 2004, Khosla raised $1.1 billion for two venture funds last year. The funds, which include $400 million of his own money, will be used for alternative energy and information technology companies. He had already earned a reputation for courage and creativity as the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems and as a member of the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
- Curious to know more about how new technology and the natural world intersect, we asked Khosla, who lives in Portola Valley, the following questions:
- POST: Is it possible to turn around some of the major, disturbing environmental problems like climate change or loss of species by applying new technology?
- Vinod Khosla (VK): Absolutely! My favorite quotation is something Stanford professor Paul Romer said: “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” This crisis is an opportunity to fundamentally change an industry (energy) that has had limited innovation. I’m an unabashed technology evangelist when it comes to solutions to the problems we continue to face.
- POST: Can you describe two of the most promising “science experiments” you are funding?
- VK: Calera makes cement using CO2 from coal burning as feedstock. The process turns the traditional idea of carbon sequestration on its head. Not only is it carbon free; it’s actually carbon negative. The more coal we use, the more cement we produce, while taking CO2 out of the air. Another company, Kior, is producing bio-crude oil, essentially taking the million-year-long natural process of producing crude oil and reducing it to seconds. The new oil goies into the existing refinery infrastructure.
- POST: Can you suggest how land protection features in the spectrum of technologies you are promoting?
- VK: Personally, I think there is genuine value in open space, and it offers substantial economic value. To me open space is more fun than a movie, and we invest in making movies! Being a shared resource makes it more difficult to "finance," but organizations like POST are doing a good job of it.
