Vinod Khosla, of Khosla Ventures and the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, is one of the rock stars of this summit. His presentation, "...mostly convenient truths from a technology optimist," was sharp and witty and immediately set the summit on a new tact. Khosla has a dogged belief in technology and using bold allocations of venture capitol to reach innovative solutions. Khosla Ventures only invests in a project if he believes that it will be cost competitive with carbon within five to seven years without subsidies.

<!-- While Khosla Ventures is clearly a great thing, his message is tricky for two reasons. If I understand it, part of what is required to make new technologies cost effective is correctly pricing existing technologies (i.e. a carbon tax, or a cap-and-trade system). It will take incredible global political consensus to do so. A blindly optimistic outlook makes that much more difficult. Second, it's unclear, because we're in this so deep, if we can get enough capital to spur enough innovation to make enough difference in a short enough span of time. -->

Although his general purpose was beating the drum of innovation, he did specifically address renewable fuels. He seems to agree with us, at least in the promise of second-generation biofuels. Khosla suggests that corn-based ethanol will not be competitive in five years. Therefore, the recent discussion is irrelevant. However, he believes that, within ten years, everyone will believe that oil will have to rapidly decrease in price to compete with second generation biofuels.