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The six million dollar men

Silicon Valley plans to clean up by investing in green energy.

These unpredictable and unfamiliar factors add significantly to the risk. Nevertheless, Lightspeed funds a range of companies that are developing everything from "clean coal" to bioengineered algae for biofuel manufacture.

Ira Ehrenpreis of Technology Partners, a venture capital firm in Palo Alto, California, that has taken a similar plunge, says many of these worries have eased as public and political opinion have swung in favour of green energy. "We have come a long way, from a country that was divided over green energy to one that is essentially united," he told a meeting of Silicon Valley's legendary networking society, the Churchill Club, in January.

It's not just venture capitalists who are crowding into green tech. Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, has made a series of investments, including $10 million in solar thermal company eSolar and another $10 million in Makani, which hopes to launch a fleet of high-flying kites to extract energy from the wind. Investors are also starting to look beyond energy-generating technologies to other aspects of the energy economy. Technology Partners has backed APX, which helps companies buy, use and trade energy more efficiently, and Tesla Motors, which makes an electric sports car that can go from zero to 60 miles (almost 100 kilometres) an hour in 3.9 seconds.

So will Silicon Valley's ongoing investment in the evolution of green technology make an Earth-changing difference? "We need people who are looking at over-the-horizon technologies," says David Downie, director of the Global Roundtable on Climate Change, a group of influential academics, companies and government representatives brought together by the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York. Yet while he acknowledges that the technologies being fostered by the venture capitalists will have an impact, he doesn't feel they'll ever be the whole solution. "Silicon Valley can't negotiate with the Chinese and U.S. governments; it can't mandate new policies on deforestation and zero emissions," he says.

It's a limitation the venture capitalists accept too. "Technology can't solve the problem of deforestation," says Khosla. The solution will be a team effort that includes entrepreneurs, politicians and ordinary people. "Can Silicon Valley save the planet? Not on its own," says Downie. But ask him whether we can save the planet without the Valley and he pauses. "That's much more interesting. There's no question we need it."

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