Bill Joy was one of the seminal figures in the rise of networked computing, and now he hopes to be present at the creation of another world-changing industry, in green-energy technology.
The cofounder of Sun Microsystems, now a partner at the Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is trying to find and fund companies that can overhaul the economics of energy in favor of renewable sources. Others may debate whether incremental improvements to existing technologies can gain enough momentum to save us from environmental ruin, but Joy—like many energy investors who got their start in IT—argues that we have no choice but to spend more money developing longer-shot breakthroughs. “Given the number of people on the planet with legitimate aspirations to a better life,” he said Thursday night at an interview session staged by the MIT Enterprise Forum, “fully deploying existing technologies wouldn’t provide enough headroom.” Later, he added: “And I don’t think the legendary venture returns will come from incremental advancements.”
Questioned on stage by Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review (video below), Joy said he believes some renewable sources of energy are already close to being competitive with traditional forms of power when the unpredictability of oil or gas prices is taken into account. But he added that the world still desperately needs ancillary breakthroughs in energy storage and energy efficiency. The combination is one reason why VCs expect tantalizingly huge returns on at least some of their investments in greentech companies, because if you can make consumption five times more efficient and double the efficiency of production, you’ve gotten a “10x improvement” in the economics of energy, Joy argued.
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