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.”
National Grid Renewables has broken ground on its 100 MW Apple River Solar Project in Polk County, Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin solar farm, which will use US-made First Solar Series 6 Plus bifacial modules, will be constructed by The Boldt Company, creating 150 construction and service jobs. Apple River Solar will generate over $36 million in direct economic benefits over its first 20 years.
Once it comes online in late 2025, Apple River Solar will supply clean energy to Xcel Energy, which serves customers throughout the Upper Midwest. According to National Grid Renewables, the solar farm will generate enough energy to power around 26,000 homes annually. It will also offset about 129,900 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year – equivalent to taking 30,900 cars off the road.
“We are excited to see this project begin as it underscores our dedication to delivering clean, reliable and affordable energy to our customers,” said Karl Hoesly, President, Xcel Energy-Wisconsin and Michigan. “This project is an important step in those goals while bringing significant economic benefits to Polk County and the local townships.”
Electrek reported in February that Xcel Energy, Minnesota’s largest utility, expects to cut more than 80% – and possibly up to 88% – of its emissions by 2030, putting it on track to hit Minnesota’s goal of net zero by 2040. It also says it’s on track to achieve its clean energy goals for all the Upper Midwest states it serves – Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Michigan.
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Tesla has announced that it will finally deliver 500 kW charging as it is about to install its long-awaited V4 Supercharger cabinets.
The rollout of Supercharger V4 has been a strange one, to say the least.
Tesla has been deploying the new charging stations for two years and calling them “Supercharger V4”, but it has only been deploying the charging stalls.
Supercharger stations are made of two main parts: the stalls, which are where the charging cable is located, and the cabinets, which are generally located further back and include all the power electronics.
For all these new “Supercharger V4”, Tesla was actually using Supercharger V3 cabinets. This has been limiting the power output of the charging stations to 250 kW – although
Today, Tesla officially announced its “V4 Cabinet”, which the automaker claims will enable of “delivering up to 500kW for cars and 1.2MW for Semi.”
Here are the main features of the V4 Cabinet as per Tesla:
- Faster charging: Supports 400V-1000V vehicle architectures, including 30% faster charging for Cybertruck. S3XY vehicles enjoy 250kW charge rates they already experience on V3 Cabinet — charging up to 200 miles in 15 minutes.
- Faster deployments: V4 Cabinet powers 8 posts, 2X the stalls per cabinet. Lower footprint and complexity = more sites coming online faster.
- Next-generation hardware: Cutting-edge power electronics designed to be the most reliable on the planet, with 3X power density enabling higher throughput with lower costs.
Tesla reports that its first sites with the new V4 Cabinets are going into permitting now. The company expects its first sites to open next year.
We recently reported about Tesla’s new Oasis Supercharger project, which includes larger solar arrays and battery packs to operate the charging station mostly off-grid.
Early in the deployment of the Supercharger network, Tesla promised to add solar arrays and batteries to all Supercharger stations, and Musk even said that most stations would be able to operate off-grid.
While Tesla did add solar and batteries to a few stations, the vast majority of them don’t have their own power system or have only minimal solar canopies.
Back in 2016, I asked Musk about this, and he said that it would now happen as Tesla had the “pieces now in place” with Supercharger V3, Powerpack V2, and SolarCity:
It took about 8 years, but it sounds like the pieces are now getting actually in place with Supercharger V4, Megapacks, and this new Oasis project.
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Hyundai has a new secret weapon it’s about ready to unleash. To revamp the brand in China and counter BYD’s surge, Hyundai is launching a new AI-powered EV next year. The new model will be Hyundai’s first dedicated electric car for the world’s largest EV market.
With the help of Haomo, a Chinese autonomous startup, Hyundai will launch its first EV equipped with generative AI. It will also be its first model designed specifically for China.
A Hyundai Motor official said (via The Korea Herald) the company is “working to load the software” onto the new EV model, “which will be released in the Chinese market next year.” The spokesperson added, “The level of autonomous driving is somewhere between 2 and 2.5.”
In comparison, Tesla’s Autopilot is considered a level 2 advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) on the SAE scale (0 to 5), meaning it offers limited hands-free features.
With Autopilot, you still have to keep your eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel, or the system will notify you and eventually disengage.
Haomo’s system, DriveGPT, unveiled last spring, takes inspiration from the OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT.
The system can continuously update in real-time to optimize decision-making by absorbing traffic data patterns. According to Haomo, DriveGPT is used in around 20 models as it looks to play a bigger role in China.
Hyundai hopes new AI-powered EV boosts sales in China
Electric vehicle sales continue surging in China. According to Rho Motion, China set another EV sales record last month with 1.2 million units sold, up 50% from October 2023.
Over 8.4 million EVs were sold in China in the first ten months of 2024, a notable 38% increase from last year.
BYD continues to dominate its home market. According to Autovista24, BYD accounted for 32.9% of all PHEV and EV (NEV) sales in China through September, with over half of the top 20 best-selling EV models.
Tesla was second with a 6.5% share of the market, but keep in mind these numbers only include plug-in models (PHEV).
Like most foreign automakers, Hyundai is struggling to keep up with the influx of low-cost electric models in China. Beijing Hyundai’s sales have been slipping since 2017. Through September, Korean automaker’s share of the Chinese market fell to just 1.2%.
Last month, Hyundai opened its first overseas digital R&D center in China to help kick off its return to the region.
According to local reports, Hyundai is partnering with other local tech companies like Thundersoft, a smart cockpit provider, and others in China to power up its next-gen EVs
With its first AI-powered EV launching next year, Hyundai hopes to turn things around in the region quickly. The new model will be one of five to launch in China through 2026.
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