Here’s a good piece in the Los Angeles Times on Silicon Valley VCs and their green investments. This section stood out, especially when compared to companies like Solyndra and Tesla that are only making it through taxpayer money:

Such talk was once heretical in Silicon Valley, and it still rankles Vinod Khosla, one of its most prominent investors. A co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc. and a longtime partner at marquee venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla started his own outfit, Khosla Ventures, in 2004 to invest in green-technology companies.
Khosla maintains one of the most eclectic green-tech portfolios — companies involved in things as varied as solar energy, plant-based industrial chemicals and methods to improve the efficiency of internal combustion engines.
He has developed a reputation as something of a contrarian when it comes to green investing, dismissing electric cars, zero-emission buildings and other favored technologies as unable to pass what he calls the “Chindia” test: the price at which China and India will adopt a technology without subsidies.
“In the end, every single technology has to compete unsubsidized in the marketplace against fossil fuels,” said Khosla, rail-thin and dressed head to toe in black during an interview at his Sand Hill office.
For Khosla, green tech is not so much changing the nature of Silicon Valley venture investing as it is about taking it back to the future. Before such investing became more of a financial business, venture capitalists in the 1980s understood technology and took technical risks, similar to what is happening now with clean technology, he said.
“It’s not like you have another clever idea and you do a Web application,” Khosla said. “It’s about fundamental breakthroughs, and that’s physics, chemistry and biology, the hard stuff.”
For instance, Khosla is backing Calera, which was founded by a Stanford University professor to create “green” cement by combining carbon dioxide emissions from power plants with seawater. Another Khosla-backed company, Amyris, was started by UC Berkeley researchers.
“When I met them they were working on malaria drugs,” he said of Amyris’ founders. “Six months later the same genetically engineered bugs were producing diesel.”
Khosla also dismisses the notion that green-tech start-ups need hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. Although that may be true for companies developing large-scale renewable energy projects, most green-tech ventures require no more capital than a typical chip start-up, he said.
“What’s different is the amount of technical expertise needed, which many venture capitalists are just not equipped to do,” Khosla said. “It’s about being more patient and looking for larger breakthroughs rather than rushing things to market.”

Silly old-school thinking. Doesn’t Khosla realize government bailouts are the future?