Seriously people. These are all good points. There is entirely too much glad handing and subsidized monies floating around in the name of “green” without a whole lot actually being steered towards a viable soultion. Considering the recent trouble we’re in by way of those willing to ignore common sense reality in favor of greed and ideology, it would seem that listening to Khosla would be more prudent than tossing about the same tired claims about nano-batteries and thin-filmed promises.

Public relations and marketing machines can be dangerously persuasive with a public that ignores hard numbers in favor of bleary eyed pseudo-technical pantheism. There is no easy or singular solution to our energy and transportation problem. There’s a difference between simply wanting to believe, and the realities of scale. While I agree that investing in new technologies is key, let’s be wary of the difference between fact, fiction - and invest wisely. Take off the blinders for a second and think for a second before re-bleating the latest claims of start ups. In the meantime, I’ll keep waiting for my atomic flying car.

Interesting how none of the firm you list there have any involvement in power generation, load abatement through distributed generation or plain energy efficiency.

A truly “blackswan” strategy for road transport would be to get people off the road and into public transportation, and the high price of gasoline is looking like it’s taking care of that anyways. Based on the types of companies here, his strategy for cutting down on road transport emissions - relying on expensive, unscaled and complex technologies - seems to me like it holds very little prospect without gigantic subsidies. 

I find it difficult to find any intellectual merit to his argument if he offers no solutions for the power generation sector other than carbon capture, which is more of a black hole than a black swan at the moment. And the fact that wind is running into the limits of technological improvement is a positive thing: now wind operators can focus on scaling up and seeking economies across the system to lower costs.

More about Khosla? He is a software guy. His meager understanding of mechanical engineering principles is manifest in his misguided investments in biofuels, based on greed (subsidies), not science. Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers.

Taking his comments as summarized, one at a time:
  * “Photovoltaics”—Khosla doesn’t know what he’s talking about. PV at scale will be economical and, more importantly, has excellent EROEI, especially thin film which is finally ramping up.
  * “Wind turbines .. without storage, they don’t provide spinning reserve”—Klueless Khosla. Spinning reserves can be handled in other ways. The dinosaur utilities bring up storage as an issue; cheap shot. Wind works fine when balanced with other renewables in a smart grid environment.
  * “Prius hybrids”—Khosla is korrect, but for different reasons. The Black Swan in this case is PRT / podcars, 100% solar powered, as Bill James commented. http://www.solarevolution.com.
  * “Biodiesel? Nope, not a great idea.”—Khosla is korrect. Just a way to destroy tropical rainforests.
  * “Zero emission buildings”—Wrong again, software guy. Buildings consume ~ 50% of US energy. Huge upside potential.
  * “Clean Coal?”—No such thing. This is not news. If he is so smart, Khosla can stop making ethanol, which uses mostly coal-generated electricity to process.
  * “Carbon Capture”—True. Again, he’s not telling us anything new here.
  * “T. Boone Pickens’ plan for LNG and wind?”—Yes and no. NG is in short supply. For transport, it’s preposterous to use it. OTOH, wind is economical and has great resources in the Great Plains. Off the mark, dude.
  * “New battery technology for EVs?”—A better battery is not the issue. The EV is still a ton to move a person, still ugly: 40k fatalities a year won’t change with the EV. See Bill James’ website.
  * “Efficiency is valuable but not sufficient.”—Duh. What Khosla overlooks is the disruptive technology that will be so much more efficient that we will be able to power our society with much less energy, and with cleaner sources.

Khosla has made some smart moves. He is an inspirational speaker. Just don’t forget that he’s a Republican and a software guy.

Unfortunately, even Lehman Bros was into this clean deal before it collapsed! So that really shows us where these investment fund managers mindset is going!

We can approach the efficiency of long-haul freight by building Personal Rapid Transit networks.  They cut energy requirements by 50-90%. 

The City of San Jose, CA and Masdar, Abu Dhabi are moving forward to implement such networks.

Bill,
Tell me more about the San Jose Personal Rapid Transit networks.
Eric

Isn’t it funny that the posts here are attacking the man, Khosla, and not disproving his points?  You can call him Mr. Sunshine, but I think it is pretty dark in the haze of green where many Americans live today.  Listen, folks, no one wants to pollute, but who really wants to waste money pretending not to pollute?  So when capitalists step up to accept misguided government handouts, who is to blame?  The answer to that one is chilling.  It started with ENRON and the survivors now own NBC!

“GOT STORAGE?”

If you “live, breathe, and eat renewable energy” then you need to do some backgrounding on Vinod Khosla. He’s a relative newcomer to cleantech, but gets more than his share of media attention. I’m glad software and dot-com VCs are discovering cleantech. However, the people to listen to are those who have been in it for 10 years or more. Khosla, Metcalf and the like are able to get air time for their agendas. Others, like Nth Power founder Nancy Floyd, add real value to the discourse.
http://energypriorities.com/entries/2008/11/nancy_floyd_greenbuild.php

DD.
We know who Vinod Khosla is.  I’ll use emoticons next time for the humor-impaired.
Eric

EEstor alert: note that the commenter “b” above is the author of the website http://theEEstory.com/ which appears to be undergoing a revolt at the moment.

Dearest goparc,
Vinod Khosla is a compelling speaker and obviously a successful and brilliant investor.
Of course I know who he is. In the future I will use emoticons for the irony-impaired.
He does have a tendency to contradict himself - he slights PV although he is an investor in a PV start-up. He slights food-based ethanol although he is an investor in food-based ethanol. He is a thought leader and I very much respect and admire him but not everything he says is gospel.
Sincerely, Eric Wesoff

Vinod Khosla’s speech has to be taken in the right spirit (which many of those who attended his talk on “GreenWashing” understand). He backed up all his “claims” with statistics and profound logic.

It looks like he (or rather his investment company) is for “green technologies” only If it solves REAL problem not some phony problems in the real world.

He is not such as an unknown person that Eri Wessof needs someone to tell who Vinod is.