Newsweek has a good story about how big-name Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins fell for clean tech.
It took several steps, but the ironic obsession by new partner Bill Joy with his $50 million 190-foot superyacht is what put it into high-gear:
…Joy was already deeply interested in alternative energy, ironically thanks to an indulgence of the über-wealthy. Since 2004, he has spent tens of millions to build what he describes as the world’s most environmentally friendly sailboat: a 190-foot superyacht, to be named Ethereal when it’s finished in 2008. As part of the boat’s design process, Joy had been rethinking nearly every aspect of energy generation and efficiency. At KP, Joy developed a taxonomy of 65 investment categories and ranked each red, yellow or green…
Another catalyst was India-born mechanical engineer KR Sridhar, whose initial project was to convert solar-generated electricity into air, water and methane and to grow a living plant inside a tent on Mars. But NASA canned Sridhar’s project, so he approached Kleiner with a new idea: Reverse his electrolyzer technology into a fuel cell — using water, oxygen and a hydrogen source such as natural gas to cleanly generate electricity.
The company became Ion America, since renamed to Bloom Energy (The company finally has a Web site, but still reveals little).
Tags: co:Bloom-Energy, co:Ion-America, inv:Kleiner-Perkins-Caufield-&-Byers, people:Bill-Joy, people:KR-Sridhar4 Comments
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Ranma Kovi said:
Hydroxyl compounds like ethanol do not yield enough energy compared saturated alkanes such as gasoline. Yes Natural gas which is a by product of petroleum extraction usually get wasted since we don’t know what to do with it. Breaking C-H bond of methane is holy grail in Organometallic chemistry. Lot of work in last 25+ years nothing to show at room temperature. It has same side effects of higher order alkanes such as gasoline but generate lot more energy than gasoline. If Bloom Energy can do something with Natural Gas good luck, Chemists wasted life time chasing C-H bond activation.
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Edward Miller said:
If I recall correctly ION was building SOFCs.
http://cleantechvc.blogspot.com/2005/05/ion-america-emerges-from-stealth-mode.html
http://www.ostp.gov/PCAST/agenda_9_20_05_files/Sridhar_IonAmerica_PCAST_20Sep05.pdf -
David said:
The beauty of alternative energy research/development rests on its large pool of various food resources and seemlingly advancing technologies in nano, gene, and computing etc., which help to leap frog generations of existing knowledge and technologies. The worms coming out this can smell and feel interesting and promising. KP etc. should venture the adventures and pave the way for more innovations.
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peter said:
here’s a video of bill joy talking about cleantech:
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Global Nerdy » Blog Archive » Developer Links said:
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Create A Search Engine And Beat Google : Business Opportunities And Ideas said:
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