Meet Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, a long time venture capitalist and a man determined to help foster clean energy technologies and end our dependence on foreign oil.

Vinod Khosla, the VC mogul states, "The nature of our fund is that we don't make plans. We fund everything that is interesting and we fund nothing that is uninteresting. Because we don't have a quota to make"

Vinod Khosla grew up dreaming of being an entrepreneur, despite growing up in an Indian Army household with no business or technology connections. Since age 16, when he first heard about Intel starting up, he dreamt of starting his own technology company. Vinod Khosla started Khosla Ventures in 2004. Two-thirds of Khosla Venture's investments are focused on cleantech and the other third is concentrated on web, mobile startups. In 2007, the firm had 14 clean tech deals valued at $68.4 million. Vinod is passionate in the cleantech industry and believes proper analysis will ultimately lead to healthier environment.

What's the best way to help the environment and lower carbon reduction? "They should change their light bulbs. That saves them money and its a negative cost per a ton of carbon. While a Toyota prius is $90 to reduce a ton of carbon."

Hitlines:

1 - Coal-Powered Ethanol: A Dirty Shade of Green:

The ethanol industry must be in a pretty bad state if cheap and dirty coal plants need to be built to sustain it. The Oil Drum and Biofuels Digest say that two coal-powered plants are being proposed in Iowa, partly to provide power for the state’s ethanol producers. Everyone knows that corn-based ethanol is far from sustainable, but it doesn’t get much dirtier than that.

2 - Infinia Raises $50M for Stirling Solar:

Infinia, a company that has spent the past 25 years working on stirling engines, just announced that it has raised a Series B round of $50 million. Why is it raising such a sizable round now? The company, which is backed by a who’s who of entrepreneur investor firms in Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures, Bill Gross’ Idealab and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, says it will start selling its stirling engine product for solar thermal power plants by the end of this year and will use these funds to make that happen.

 

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GigaOm Show » Episode 29 Discussion - Venture Capital vs. Oil: Funding Clean Tech