Bush Plan May Support Clean Tech - Mergers, Acquisitions, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds -- DealBook - New York Times

"Venture capitalists may have a new ally in their rush to invest in clean technologies: President Bush. As the president outlined an aggressive plan to reduce gasoline use by 20 percent within a decade through a mandatory fuels standard in his State of the Union speech, several V.C.’s said that their investments in ethanol and other environmentally friendly fuels could pay off — and help the United States meet that goal. Companies like Khosla Ventures invested more than $2.9 billion in clean tech in 2006, according to the Cleantech Venture Network.
As politicians, including President Bush, have begun to call for greater energy independence, several V.C. firms have already made sizeable investments in clean tech. Khosla Ventures, started by the Sun Microsystems co-founder, Vinod Khosla, has invested in dozens of companies, including several cellulosic ethanol plants in California, Massachusetts and upstate New York. Samir Kaul, one of the firm’s executives, told The Deal that the V.C. market for investing in renewable and alternative fuels would be big enough to accommodate many more investors."