Vinod Khosla (VK) recently did a lengthy interview at the Milken Institute 2009 Global Conference. The interview was conducted by Elizabeth Corcoran (EC) of Forbes. You can see the video of the interview here:

Milken: Khosla on the Shift to Renewable Energy

These are excerpts from a transcript I put together from the recording. You can read the entire transcript (in three segments) on my R-Squared Energy Blog. I have labeled my comments with RR.

EC (13:40): In the past 90 days we have seen something like a billion dollars being put into solar investments - whether in the form of equity or debt. Is that stupid money?

This is a guest post by Joost van den Bulk in which the costs and benefits of electric cars available by 2010 are compared with internal combustion cars powered by gasoline for the Netherlands. It is a summary of his Master thesis in environmental science at Wageningen University in the Netherlands (PDF, 3 Mb, 72 pages).

Developments in battery technology have made cars driven by electric propulsion cost competitive with internal combustion based cars. Based on a scenario in which a car owner drives 15,000 kilometers annually, the car is owned for a period of 6 years, and the oil price on average remains above 100 dollars per barrel in the next two decades, it was found that an electric car for the consumer is already cheaper than a gasoline powered vehicle in the Netherlands, and that this will only improve in the future. This is the case because higher initial investments in the purchase of an electric car are more than compensated by lower fuel costs, reduced maintenance and tax benefits. Furthermore, greenhouse gas emissions of an electric car are at least half that of the gasoline powered car based on the current Dutch electricity mix.

This week's installment of the podcast is a conversation that I had with Ulf Bossel, organizer of the Lucerne Fuel Cell Forum, one of the biggest scientific fuel cell conferences going. This conference used to flip every year between a focus on low temperature PEM fuel cells and a focus on high temperature solid oxide fuel cells. A couple of conferences ago, the PEM cycle was dropped on "sustainability" grounds and now the conference is flipped between the SOFC program and a general fuel cell program.

You can listen to the conversation by clicking play in the built in mp3 player or by downloading the show directly by clicking on the link. A transcript is available for this conversation below the fold.

or download the link directly: Ulf Bossel on the H2 economy vs the electron economy (12MB, 35min)

Here are some reports that may be of interest as well.

"Have the guts to consider the silent consequences when standing in front of the next snake-oil humanitarian." -Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Black Swan

I believe our generation faces a sobering choice: Take serious steps to reduce our fossil fuel usage now - and this will undoubtedly entail some amount of hardship - or leave it to our children to face a great deal of hardship. I firmly believe this is our choice, and we must look to solutions that move us in that direction. I also believe that if most people understood that we are pushing a very serious problem onto our children - instead of assuming scientists and engineers will solve the problem - then we would collectively pursue a solution with far greater urgency.