Today in Biofuels Opinion: “At scale, there is no capital efficient investing in energy.”

From Reuters: “News of the $300 million fund raised by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and his longtime partner, Ben Horowitz, has been dominating the webosphere…Interestingly enough, Andreessen tells Fortune that they will be keeping a wide berth from anything related to cleantech, energy and transportation, stating flat out: “No cleantech, no rocket ships, no electric cars.”…Energy and car startups require a completely different style of investing and incubation than software and web firms. Neal Dikeman, a partner at Jane Capital Partners, aptly summed this idea up last week in his post on “the rules” in cleantech investing. Some important rules Dikeman notes include: “Energy is slow and big – Energy technology R&D and commercialization time frames are longer and costs higher…At scale, there is no capital efficient investing in energy.”

Paul Wickoff: “A big problem of today’s Hybrids are that they still run on petroleum gasoline, imported to us from unfriendly nations.  American made ethanol provides jobs and $$$ for the economy, big-time.  Petroleum has about 80% process efficiency.  Newest ethanol technology has at least 150% EROEI.  Ethanol contains about 1/6 gallon of petroleum, the rest is fossil fuels, sun light, wind, etc.  Therefore we turn one gallon of petroleum into at least 8 times the energy through ethanol fuel.  This combination can wipe out oil imports.  That is why the government is working hard to get there.  Tomorrow’s Hybrids need to have Flex Fuel Vehicle technology as well.”

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