Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Tony Blair Joins Silicon Valley



Written by Joshua S Hill

Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair has joined a Silicon Valley business as a senior environmental adviser.

Blair will be joining Khosla Ventures, a firm started by Sun Microsystems Inc., co-founder Vinod Khosla. The company has been investing in companies that are themselves pursuing alternative fuel strategies and other environmentally focused technologies.

“[Blair] is going to help us in many areas that technie nerds like us here in Silicon Valley don’t understand and tend to underestimate the importance of,” Khosla said.
Two companies that Khosla Ventures have already invested in include Calera and Cogenra Solar Inc. Calera is looking to make “coal and natural gas power plants and cement plants cheaper and cleaner than solar and wind by reducing carbon by more than 100%,” while Cogenra Solar is looking to multiply the energy efficiency of solar cells.

“I’m more and more convinced that unless we connect and align the public policy space with the creativity and ingenuity and innovation of the entrepreneurs, we’re not going to resolve this issue,” Blair said. “The answer to this has got to lie in science and technology.”

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