Thursday, October 30, 2008

Vinod Khosla Feels Algae Are not Yet Ready for Primetime?

You are at: Oilgae Blog.

Vinod Khosla told more than 700 people attending the Algal Biomass Summit in Seattle on Oct. 23 that he has five criteria for investing in cutting edge energy technologies. Algae meets four of those criteria but fails on the last. Khosla said he believes the engineering problems of growing and harvesting algae are manageable. And he believes algae will have manageable startup costs and a quick innovation cycle.

Where algae fails to meet Khosla’s criteria is that he doesn’t believe algae will be able to compete unsubsidized with petroleum and other alternatives unsubsidized in the next five to seven years.

What algae needs, Khosla said, is a “black swan” solution. Black swans are those very important, industry disrupting ideas that may seem obvious in retrospect but no one forecast beforehand.

Full news report from here

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