Center for Advanced BioEnergy Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Friday, June 10, 2011

Khosla chides Big Oil for lack of biofuels appetite

Reuters
By Reese Ewing
SAO PAULO Mon Jun 6, 2011 5:52pm EDT

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Billionaire Vinod Khosla took Big Oil to task on Monday for taking more risk on a long-odds deepwater oil well than on the future of biomass energy that he says will change the world within decades.

Speaking the 2011 Brazilian Ethanol Summit in Sao Paulo, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems said that the world is on the verge of a technological breakthrough in cost-effectively converting crops like sugarcane into most of the fuels and consumer products that petroleum now provides.

He bluntly chastised executives from energy companies such as Royal-Dutch Shell and Britain's BP, who were sitting on stage with him before a crowd of 2,000 people, for what he said was a failure to sufficiently embrace biofuels.

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