Here is a link to the Wall Street Journal blog post on Vinod Khosla’s comments at a recent conference. Mostly what Khosla has to say is interesting because he says it. To me the most interesting thing about the WSJ blog post is that Khosla did not appear to say anything remarkable (except perhaps his comment about setting aside 3 billion acres to test various energy technologies). In fact he seems to state the obvious such as “the cheapest thing ends up winning.” Well, that is a problem for investors in new energy technologies because oil continues to be cheap (or at least cheaper than the alternatives). There will be a price per barrel at which this statement will no longer be true. I don’t know what that price is, but that price is way up there (perhaps well north of $100 per barrel). I think Khosla has been credited with actually calculating that price, but a quick internet search did not yield it. Anyway, as I (and others) have pointed out before, it could be many years before oil approaches that number. This is not a reason not to pursue alternative fuels, but it is a reason to believe that the returns on investments in alternative fuels may be farther off than say investment in social media or other technologies. By the way, from a venture perspective, if the returns on funds raised today are not expected for more than ten years, VCs wont invest. So, an alternative financing method (an alternative to the customary 10 year venture fund) needs to be found for some (maybe all) of these projects.