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Renewable Energy @ EmTech08
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According to Khosla Ventures' founder, different individuals and organisations are trying to solve the energy crisis in different ways, and soon many of these will come together to create a much better business environment for renewable energy.
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Thursday, September 25, 2008:
Vinod Khosla, founder, Khosla Ventures is highly optimistic about the potential for technology to address climate change and other environmental problems. Providing a great start to the EmTech08 conference (formerly called the Emerging Technology Conference) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vinod Khosla outlined many areas that promise great opportunity for the tech community. Technology Review, Inc. is hosting its eighth annual Emerging Technologies Conference. EmTech08 is believed to be the premier event for exploring next-generation technologies and their impact on business and society.
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Khosla delivered the keynote speech at the conference with Renewable Energy as the main theme of his presentation. He outlined the fact that while four years back no one was looking at specialising in the energy sector, but now there is a major buzz amongst the current crop of technopreneurs and tech professionals.
A key message that spanned across his entire presentation was that different individuals and organisations were trying to solve the energy crisis in different ways, and soon many of these will come together (like pieces of jigsaw puzzle) to create a much better business environment for renewable energy.
An interesting insight he shared was despite popular perception being that wind energy and solar energy are the most lucrative segments with regard to producing cleaner and more efficient energy, the bigger business opportunities possibly lay in sectors such as engines (automobiles, aero-planes, etc), lighting industry, appliances and batteries.
Vinod touched upon the fact that wind energy has already reached 50 per cent efficiency levels. As per the Betz Law, the maximum efficiency that can be achieved is 59 per cent -- thus, there is not much of an excitement in increasing the efficiency of wind energy devices. But, the real opportunity lies in building storage systems for storing electricity generated by wind farms, and supplying them at times of need.
As batteries increase their energy efficiency, electric cars and mobikes will become more attractive as an alternative to the current fleet of hydro-carbon fuel based vehicles, stressed Khosla.
Another interesting avenue that he mentioned was tapping geo-thermal energy, wherein technology needs to be developed to drill down to depths of the Earth where we can tap the heat below the surface of the Earth and then harness it to generate energy.
Vinod also listed many organisations that are already working on overcoming some of these challenges. (All of these firms had Khosla Ventures amongst their investors.)
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