Biofuels: Think Outside The Barrel

Google TechTalks
March 29, 2006

Vinod Khosla

Vinod Khosla is a venture capitalist considered one of the most successful and influential personalities in Silicon Valley. He was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems and became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in 1986. In 2004 he formed Khosla Ventures.

ABSTRACT
On Wednesday, March 29th, by invitation from our co-founders and CEO, our special guest, Vinod Khosla, visited Google to deliver a tech talk about the emergence of ethanol as a viable, market ready, and competitive source of renewable energy. His presentation has been making huge waves in the investor, policy, and business communities...

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• ethanol
• biofuels
• biofuel
• GoogleTechTalks

[soylentgreenb]

"For example: Petroleum has TWICE the energy ethanol has. He talks about 25%."

Ethanol contains 23.5 MJ/l and regular gasoline contains 35 MJ/l. That's a 33% less energy.

Like diesel fuel, ethanol is significantly more efficient than gasoline because you can compress it significantly more. That's likely how he arrives at that number.

[mikkymax]

Some of the viewers above have used profane language. When some serious topic is going on. Please AVOID PROFANITY . It is of no use.

[2011rhythmdivine]

An alternative has been presented. Hopefully it'll be the solution to our problems.

[2011rhythmdivine]

An alternative has been presented. Hopefully it'll be the solution to our problems.

[cinndave]

Brazil makes the cheapest gasohol in the world, but Bush put a tariff on it to protect American corn farmers. I guess he's trying to avoid the irony of swapping foreign oil to foreign biofuel!

[cinndave]

LOVE this presentation! Everything about it was brilliant.

Here's another idea instead of that $40 oil tax: How about a gas tax inverse to the price of gas. So when gas prices go down, the tax goes up to stabilize pump prices and generate revenue. And when the gas price goes up, the tax rate automatically goes down to provide relief. this would stabilize the final price!

[i0null]

Another insightful presentation!

Definitely worth the watch.

Thanks google!

Google++;

[salvadoraceves]

i applaud khosla for his concern of the environment and the global economy, but not without considering his own personal financial incentives. good idea in the sense that it can reduce dependency of fossil fuel, but it is no replacement; one is a heterogeneous solution that can provide great efficiency when partnered with hybrid technology, while the other is a volatile compound whose impact is not yet clear.

[salvadoraceves]

i applaud khosla for his concern of the environment and the global economy, but not without considering his own personal financial incentives. it is a good idea in terms of reducing dependency on fossil fuel, but it is no replacement; one is a heterogeneous solution that can provide great energy output when partnered with hybrid technology, while the other is a volatile compound whose impact is not yet clear.

[greyflcn]

Yeap.

Khosla is pretty well known for putting fake information about biofuels on the loudspeaker.

Without even watching this, I can know that he's gonna say

1. It takes less energy to produce ethanol than oil

2. Brazil gets almost all of their fuel from ethanol.

Just sad that Google is sitting by allowing that to happen.

greyfalcon. net/ brazil

greyfalcon. net/ brazil2

greyfalcon. net/ khosla

[trakkaton]

You are right that the energy is only 150% higher.