From Today's NY Times, a profile of Kleiner Perkins, the company behind much of our work for Advanced Equities: Capitalism to the Rescue - Green Tech Rising - NYTimes.com.
In particular, AMYRIS, which was profiled by us (directed by Peter O'Brien) over the summer:
"His immense ambitions were not unlike those of Amyris, a biofuels company in Kleiner’s portfolio located in Emeryville, Calif., next to Oakland. Amyris is synthetically engineering new strains of yeast that will convert organic matter — Brazilian sugar cane, initially — into renewable fuels for automobiles, trucks and jets. Its diesel has a carbon footprint 80 percent smaller than that of regular diesel. “Between now and 2020, here’s what we think is possible,” John Melo, Amyris’s C.E.O. told me. “Somewhere around 20 percent to 30 percent combined jet fuel and diesel” will be produced globally through a renewable process like the Amyris technology. Without impinging on rain-forest land or food production, Melo maintained, Brazil could produce 100 billion gallons of biofuel annually from cane; Africa could produce a slightly smaller amount. (Last year, U.S. drivers consumed 140 billion gallons of gasoline.) Melo, who used to be president for U.S. fuel operations for BP, told me the first niche market for Amyris would be tractors and trucks at sugar mills in Brazil in 2010; U.S. trucking fleets and diesel cars would follow in 2012. In the meantime, the company would be working on a product for military and commercial jets. How much could he produce renewable diesel for? “Our cost in Brazil is about $1.80, $1.85 a gallon,” he said. Transport costs would add another 40 cents per gallon. At the time, the wholesale cost of diesel in the U.S. was around $4 gallon. “So this is profitable venture,” Melo concluded. “By 2012 to 2013, our profits could be higher than many Fortune 500 companies.”
As with most of Kleiner’s green-tech ventures, it was a financial outcome that wasn’t yet certain in a future that wasn’t yet real. And would it even get the chance? There were impediments for sure — Brazil’s regulatory ministries might not like the idea of genetically engineered yeast, or a competitor to Amyris might dominate the market. So maybe it wouldn’t work. Or maybe it would. Melo and I were talking in a conference room with panoramic views of the East Bay. It was hot outside and warm inside; an assistant had brought in water, and the ice was melting quickly in our glasses. Seen out the window, the freeways were jammed. Oil was more than $100 a barrel. But for a brief moment, at least, in the realm of the venture capitalists, this particular idea, like so many of the others I’d heard, seemed bright with possibility, and I understood why Doerr and Gore had given in a little bit to hope. Almost anything seemed possible."
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