Al Gore Joins Big Money VC Firm Kleiner Perkins

The recent Nobel Peace Prize winner announced he has joined the prestigious Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner, to help direct the firm’s effort to finance technology solutions to global warming. Green building technologies are likely to be a beneficiary.

If you had any doubts about the business potential for green building and global warming soultions through advanced technology and systems, look no further than Gore’s announcement this week that he’s joining Kleiner Perkins, one of the marquee names in venture capital. According to one report, Kleiner Perkins is prepared to invest up to $200 million by 2009 in green technology startups. Gore said, “California’s passage of the nation’s first economy-wide limits on greenhouse gases also will make the state a testing ground to see which technologies - biofuels, hybrids, solar power plants, green building techniques - will prove most viable and cost effective.” Someone like Gore doesn’t come cheaply, so you can be sure he got some serious copnsideration to join the firm, including a strong stake in future investments. An article in Fortune on this move commented a good part of Kleiner Perkins latest fund “will be invested in technologies that aim to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. Already Kleiner has invested more than $270 million from various funds in 26 companies that make everything from microbes that scrub old oil wells to electric cars to noncorn ethanol. Twelve of Kleiner’s 22 partners now spend some or all of their time on green investments.”

Posted by on 11/14/2007 at 11:41 AM