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vinod khosla

Thiel vs. Khosla on Cleantech: Who is Right?

September 15, 2011 by Robert Rapier
with 313 views
4

This past week PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel — who was also an early investor in Facebook — made headlines when he declared that “Cleantech is an increasingly large disaster that people in Silicon Valley aren’t even talking about any more. The failure in energy and transportation points to a larger failure in clean energy — we aren’t moving any faster, literally, than we were when modern airplanes first came out.” [read more]

Vinod Khosla and the Gasification/Fermentation Debate

January 27, 2011 by Robert Rapier
with 1,693 views
3

Vinod Khosla is once more offering up his prognostications on the future of the energy business: What Matters in Biofuels? Given the likely continued dominance of the internal combustion engine, cellulosic and sugar-derived fuels offer one of the lowest risk advances to quickly and affordably achieve low-carbon transportation. I predict... [read more]

Cellulosic Ethanol Falling Short

October 1, 2009 by Robert Rapier
with 227 views
0

The reason I spend time debunking wild claims is that I think they damage the entire bioenergy sector in the long run. People who issue press releases claiming they can produce fuel for $1/gallon - and by the way we can do it next year if you give us the money - may attract some funding, but in the long run if they can't deliver,... [read more]

Vinod Khosla: Green tech must pass test

September 24, 2009 by Todd Woody
with 578 views
0

photo: Ausra In my new Green State column on Grist, I sit down with legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla to talk about his approach to green tech. Khosla — who raised a record $1.1 billion for green tech investing earlier this month — believes that unless a technology can scale and be adopted in markets like China... [read more]

Is Green Tech Investing Making a Comeback?

September 2, 2009 by Scott Edward Anderson
with 128 views
0

Image via WikipediaTuesday was a big day for green tech investing news: Khosla Ventures announced it had successfully raised $1.1 billion in capital for renewable energy and clean tech investments and the Department of Energy and the Treasury Department announced the first round of "Recovery Act" funding of $502.6 million.Does this... [read more]

Green tech investing is back with a vengeance

September 2, 2009 by Todd Woody
with 140 views
0

photo: Ausra In Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times, I write about green tech guru Vinod Khosla’s new $1.1 billion venture funds — the biggest first-time fund since the halcyon days of the dot-com era a decade ago and and a strong signal that investors see a bright future in clean and green technologies. CalPERS, the United States’ biggest... [read more]

Cello: A Lesson in Due Diligence

July 7, 2009 by Robert Rapier
with 184 views
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People sometimes ask me how - if they don't have any particular technical expertise - one determines whether companies are making fraudulent claims. I tell them that the simple test of "If it looks too good to be true..." will work in the vast majority of cases. In the case of Cello Energy, that sniff test would have saved investors... [read more]

Vinod Khosla at Milken Institute: Part II

May 1, 2009 by Robert Rapier
with 140 views
0

This is a continuation of the previous post covering Vinod Khosla's (VK) recent lengthy interview Milken Institute 2009 Global Conference. The interview was conducted by Elizabeth Corcoran (EC) of Forbes and can be viewed here.In Part I, VK discussed the role of government money, capital intensity of renewable projects, and some of his... [read more]

Vinod Khosla at Milken Institute: Part I

April 30, 2009 by Robert Rapier
with 96 views
0

Thanks to a reader for bringing this to my attention. Vinod Khosla (VK) just did a lengthy interview at the Milken Institute 2009 Global Conference. The interview was conducted by Elizabeth Corcoran (EC) of Forbes. You can see the video of the interview here:Milken: Khosla on the Shift to Renewable EnergyI am going to listen to the... [read more]

Prizes, pigs and eco-myths

March 15, 2008 by Marc Gunther
with 85 views
0

I’m just back from the Wall Street Journal’s conference on business and the environment, called ECO:nomics. The WSJ brought together an interesting mix of big-name CEOs, investors, a few environmentalists, and a noisy contingent of die-hard conservatives including some people who still believe this whole global warming thing is a some... [read more]

Cost, Land, Air and Water

January 22, 2008 by Jonathan Smith
with 94 views
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With the appropriateness of biofuels for the transportation sector in question and the increasing call for “a more granular assessment of the benefits and impacts of different biofuels”, Vinod Khosla1 proposes to the Gristmill audience one approach to assessing sustainability. We think a good fuel has to meet the CLAW requirements: C... [read more]

A pragmatic view of cellulosic biofuels or why VC Khosla is very wrong

January 17, 2008 by Joseph Romm
with 107 views
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So VC Vinod Khosla is not happy with with my recent attack on his (willful) ignorance, “VC Khosla blows his credibility dissing plug-ins.” Grist has given the billionaire a platform to defend himself, but he just spouts even more nonsense in the bizarrely titled post, “Pragmatists v. environmentalists, part I”: I have been accused of... [read more]

Toyota to have 2010 plug-in; GM invests in cellulosic ethanol

January 13, 2008 by Tyler Hamilton
with 111 views
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I won't dwell here -- there are many announcements at the Detroit auto show and they'll get tonnes of coverage by other bloggers and reporters. But two, so far, have stood out for me. First, GM said it had invested an undisclosed amount in cellulosic-ethanol maker Coskata, one of Vinod Khosla's many biofuel investments. For details,... [read more]

The solar biz is heating up

September 13, 2007 by Marc Gunther
with 134 views
0

No doubt there’s a boom unfolding in the solar energy business.Here are some of the investors in solar: Google guys Sergei Brin and Larry Page, VC firms Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark Capital, ex-Ebay exec Jeff Skoll, VC Vinod Khosla, Goldman Sachs, Idealab’s Bill Gross, mutual fund families Wellington and Fidelity. They are buying into... [read more]