Investor Vinod Khosla says focusing on 2030 climate targets is the wrong approach
SEATTLE — Vinod Khosla, the founder of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, says 2040 is the more important goalpost in combating climate change than 2030.
Khosla, who is currently worth more than $5 billion according to Forbes, made the claim at the inaugural Breakthrough Energy Summit in Seattle last week.
“If we try and reduce carbon by 2030, we will be much worse off than if we set the reduction target at 2040,” Khosla told an audience of conference attendees.
That’s because Khosla, who cofounded computer hardware firm Sun Microsystems in 1982 and spent 18 years at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, is interested in big bets. Relatedly, in July 2020, Khosla published a Medium post claiming that a dozen ambitious, catalytic leaders would transform the climate space more than a hundred less transformational leaders.
Khosla was on stage with John Doerr, another investor who, like Khosla, invested early in climate tech starting in the early 2000s and then watched as a fair amount of those so-called Clean Tech 1.0 companies flamed out. Collectively, venture capital firms invested more than $25 billion in climate tech companies between 2006 and 2011 and subsequently lost more than half their money, according to a paper from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The investing bust discouraged investors and the sector all but dried up for a few years.
Vinod Khosla and John Doerr speak on stage at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in Seattle on Tuesday October 18.
CNBC Cat Clifford
Doerr was more optimistic about the potential of iterative change than Khosla. “We need more of the technologies that are economic now deployed now,” Doerr said on stage.
But Khosla doubled down on his viewpoint that 2040 is the more consequential deadline.
“People who think we have the technology is wishful thinking. We can deploy the current technologies. I am not saying slow down, but we need the breakthroughs,” Khosla said. “And if we put a short-term window on all the breakthroughs and focus on 2030, we will be worse off in reality, even though I wish it wasn’t true… What we need and what we are likely to get is different. And 2040 is the right goal to set.
Khosla’s view is iconoclastic in the climate space.
In April 2021, President Joe Biden announced that the United States is aiming to reduce net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030 by 50 to 52 percent from 2005 levels, with the ultimate goal of having a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
“We’re planning for a both short-term sprint to 2030 that will keep 1.5 degrees Celsius in reach and for a marathon that will take us to the finish line and transform the largest economy in the world into a thriving, innovative, equitable, and just clean-energy engine of net-zero — for a net-zero world,” Biden said in Glasgow, Scotland, in November at the COP26 summit.
The United Nations’ seminal Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in April states that to have a hope of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the amount of global warming which has been codified in the Paris Climate Accord, greenhouse gases have to peak before 2025 and be reduced by 43% by 2030. Methane would need to be reduced by a third, the report said.
Why Khosla thinks short-term goals are a mistake
Focusing on “short term goals will force us to deploy suboptimal technology,” Khosla told CNBC.
For an innovation to be meaningfully successful, a technology has to be successful without government subsidies. “Every single technology at scale, has to achieve unsubsidized market competitiveness. And if it doesn’t do that, it’s the wrong technology,” Khosla told CNBC.
Nuclear fusion is one example of the kind of breakthrough technology Khosla considers critical, but which will not be commercialized by 2030. Khosla Ventures has invested in Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a fusion startup which spun out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is one of the frontrunners in the fusion space.
Fusion is the way the sun generates power and is the corollary reaction of nuclear fission, which is the way conventional and existing nuclear power reactors generate energy. Fusion has not been replicated at scale on Earth but if it can be, it offers benefits over nuclear fission, including no long-lasting radioactive waste.
Fusion “is an an exciting example,” Khosla told CNBC. “It’s far better than nuclear fission. It’s far better than coal and fossil fuels for sure. But it’s not ready. And we need to get it ready and build it.” (Khosla is not alone: The private sector fusion industry has seen almost $5 billion in private investment, according to the Fusion Industry Association.)
Khosla is 67 years old and he says “it’s likely while I’m still working — and I plan to work for a while, health permitting — will see every coal and natural gas plant in this country replaced with a fusion boiler. Every single one. That’s the goal. Within my working lifetime.”
Another transformative example is deep, advanced geothermal energy, which comes from the natural heat of the earth underground.
“But I’m not interested in today’s geothermal, because it is such a niche — it doesn’t scale,” Khosla told CNBC.
“We focused on the wrong problem, which is take existing geothermal and make it slightly more efficient, instead of saying create 100 times more sites where geothermal can be mined” by drilling much deeper into the earth where there are much hotter temperatures, Khosla said.
For example, Khosla pointed to the work deep geothermal company Quaise is doing. (Khosla was the company’s first financial backer.)
“A super hot rock well, like 500 degrees, will produce 10 times the power of a 200-degree well. And that’s what we need,” Khosla said. “If we can drill deep enough we can get to those temperatures — many, many — all of Western United States could be powered with just geothermal wells, because there’s geothermal everywhere if you go 15 kilometers, 10 miles deep.”
Yadea, which has claimed the title of the world’s largest electric vehicle maker for seven years running, has just announced a new electric motorbike powered by the company’s innovative HuaYu sodium-ion battery technology.
Yadea has long dominated the electric two-wheeler and three-wheeler market globally, but has generally relied on both lithium-ion and lead acid batteries to power its vehicles in different markets.
The newly unveiled electric scooter uses Yadea’s recently introduced sodium battery technology, offering what the company says is outstanding performance in range, charging speed, and safety. Using the HuaYu Sodium Superfast Charging Ecosystem presented by Yadea, the battery can reach 80% charge in just 15 minutes, providing greater convenience for riders.
Yadea’s sodium battery has successfully passed more than 20 safety tests, many focusing on its resistance to fire and explosions under extreme conditions like punctures and compression.
Yadea’s new sodium battery offers an energy density of 145 Wh/kg and a lifespan of up to 1,500 cycles at room temperature, with the company rating it for a five-year useful lifespan. It also includes a three-year warranty for added assurance.
With excellent low-temperature capabilities, the battery retains over 92% of its discharge capacity at -20°C, making it well-suited for colder climates.
Sodium batteries present major advantages
Most electric vehicles used in the West, especially electric two-wheelers, rely on lithium-ion batteries for their high energy density. But sodium-ion batteries offer many benefits over traditional lithium-ion batteries.
Sodium is an abundant element on the planet and is easily accessible, unlike lithium, which is concentrated in specific regions and often expensive to extract. This abundance can make sodium-ion batteries cheaper to produce, reducing costs for EV manufacturers and potentially making electric vehicles more affordable.
Lithium mining also has environmental challenges, such as water depletion and habitat destruction. Sodium, on the other hand, can be sourced from seawater or common salts, offering a more sustainable and environmentally friendly option.
Sodium-ion batteries are less prone to overheating and thermal runaway compared to lithium-ion batteries. This makes them inherently safer for electric vehicles, reducing the risk of fires and improving consumer confidence in EV technology.
Sodium-ion batteries perform better than lithium-ion in cold climates. Lithium-ion batteries struggle with capacity retention in freezing conditions, but sodium batteries maintain efficiency, making them ideal for EVs in colder regions.
Sodium batteries still have challenges to overcome
While sodium-ion batteries are promising, they currently have a lower energy density than lithium-ion batteries, meaning they store less energy per unit of weight.
For EVs, this translates to shorter driving ranges for the same-sized battery. That’s especially important in electric two-wheelers like motorbikes and electric bicycles, which don’t have much extra space for storing bulky batteries.
However, advancements in cathode materials and battery architecture are quickly closing this gap, which Yadea has demonstrated. These sodium-ion batteries still can’t match the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, but as they continue to improve their energy density, the technology’s other major advantages provide encouraging signs for larger adoption in the industry.
Yadea’s status as a major electric motorbike maker also means that its adoption of sodium-ion battery technology could help lead the entire industry towards this battery chemistry, bringing safety and performance benefits along with it.
Last year I had the unique opportunity to visit one of Yadea’s global manufacturing sites.
To see inside the company’s massive and highly-automated manufacturing processes, check out the video below!
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At CES2025, the impressively built-out John Deere exhibit was all about automation. Autonomous job sites, autonomous farms … but it was this new, battery electric, autonomous lawn mowing robot that stole the show.
The self-driving Deere mower robot was positively dwarfed by the giant farm machinery surrounding it, but it continues to prove that humans will pack bond with anything as more than one burly-looking and grizzled man asked what its name was. (It’s Howard. I’ll fight you.)
For his part, Howard packs a 21.4 kWh battery pack that runs a suite of electric motors that includes a drive motor and three cutting blade motors spread across a 60 inch cutting deck – but it’s not the electric motors that make John Deere’s little robot mower cool, it’s the way it works.
See, instead of using “just” GPS data or “just” repeating a pre-recorded run, Howard can do something in between. The way it was explained to me, you would ride the stand-up mower around the perimeter of the area you wanted to mow, select a pattern, then hop off, fold up the platform, and let it loose. Howard mows just the way you would, leaving you to focus on edging, planting, or (let’s face it) schmoozing with the clients.
It’s exactly the sort of help landscapers are looking for.
But that should come as no surprise, of course. John Deere, perhaps more than most companies, knows its customer. “We’ve been in the turf business for 60 years — it’s a core part of Deere,” says Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at John Deere, explaining things beautifully. “The work that’s being done in this industry is incredibly labor intensive … they’re not just doing the mowing work. They’re doing the tree trimming, maintaining flowerbeds and all these other jobs. The mowing is table stakes, though, for them to get the business. It’s the thing they have to do in order to get the higher value work.”
Tim Lewis, lead engineer with the commercial automatous mower, told Lawn & Landscape that the industry in general has a high turnover rate as well, making it difficult to hang to people who know where one job ends and another begins. “There’s a lot of nuances it takes to do these jobs effectively,” he explains, “so “Autonomy can help with that.”
The John Deere autonomous commercial mower (there’s no snazzy alphanumeric, yet) leverages the same camera technology as other Deere autonomous machines, but on a smaller scale (since the machine has a smaller footprint). With two cameras each on the front, left, right, and rear sides of the little guy, he has a 360-degree view of the world and enough AI to lay down a pattern, avoid an obstacle, and shut off if it thinks it’s about to mow down something (read: someone) it shouldn’t.
John Deere will have Howard on display through tomorrow at CES in the LVCC’s West Hall. If you’re in town, be sure to go say hi.
John Deere CES2025
SUOURCE | IMAGES: John Deere; Electrek.
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