Jim Moriarty talks about the greening of Silicon Valley.

Question: Can technology fix climate change?

Jim Moriarty: Technology will play potentially the role just after the culture, the people, so the people have to have that will, they have to have the interest, and technology is probably the next leading indicator or the next leading source that will lead change. The ideas behind biomass, the ideas behind clean coal- a clean coal plant is pretty amazing. There are so many interesting advancements happening in technology that are at the fringe that are now being very funded. Just even in the past 18 months there’s been a massive shift. It’s been happening for a long time. Vinod Khosla, John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins-- These are major investment VC houses, venture capital houses, that have been funding this so huge Google-esque or Google-size shift’s about to happen in that area. The one that is most intriguing to me is all the stuff happening kind of in the biomass area. It’s just really interesting, the idea that we don’t necessarily have to build more coal plants, more effective pipes for electricity to be flowing. The idea of an out-of-the-box solution that is regionally based where people buy and consume products and food and everything else and then it all goes back in to the energy to create energy, that’s pretty radical. I like that.  

Recorded on: 9/27/07