The ever-quotable cleantech venture investor Vinod Khosla gave a speech on Wednesday that managed to hit all of his controversial bullet points in the first 10 minutes. Here’s a video clip of the beginning of the speech, with his statements on replacing oil and coal in a 20-year time frame, on photovoltaics and plug-in vehicles being immaterial to climate change, and on hydrogen power being an all-round bad idea. Another juicy line: “Don’t listen to what most environmentalists say, because they come up with ideas that can’t scale.”
Here’s the bullet points of the video clip:
- I believe we can replace oil in 20 years or less. And we can do it cheaper than oil. I believe we can do the same with coal-based power.
- What we need is to focus on scaling and economics. This is a policy problem, not a technology problem.
- Photovoltaics are great investments but not material to climate change.
- Forget plug-ins — they are nice toys; they will not be material to climate change.
- Hydrogen is not even a toy, it is a bad idea.
- Don’t listen to what most environmentalists say, because they come up with ideas that can’t scale.
- You can’t tell somebody they can’t watch their NFL game because the wind isn’t blowing.
- Capital formation from private investors is the key to this business.
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