Superstar venture capitalist Vinod Khosla wants to save the planet whether you, environmentalists, or anyone else for that matter, like it or not.

With his Silicon Valley legend already sealed by founding computing workstation pioneers Sun Microsystems and becoming rainmaker extraordinaire at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), he has been ploughing his estimated €1.1bn fortune into the green technologies of tomorrow since 2004.

Last September, his venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures, sought outside investment for the first time, raising $1.1bn (€850m) for two funds; $5m–$15m (€4m–€12m) punts will be made from the main $800m (€620m) fund, while a $275m (€215m) war chest has been earmarked to seed more embryonic ideas to the tune of $2m (€1.5m). According to the US National Venture Capital Association, this is the largest amount raised since 2007 and the largest first-time fund raised since 1999. Not bad, considering venture capital investments in 2009 stood at $5.6bn (€4.3bn), a 33% drop from the $8.5bn invested in 2008, according to the Cleantech Group and Deloitte.

Khosla is the poster-child of green venture capitalism, but his bravura style and contrarian views haven’t always agreed with the hardened greenie’s palate. Electric cars are “nice toys” that will not “be material to climate change”, and while he’s backed wind and solar photovoltaic technology, he classes them as “good investments” rather than “climate change solutions”.

“Environmentalists don’t have a clue about what can and cannot be adopted,” says Khosla.“We need solutions that mass society can adopt, not just rich San Franciscans and Germans.”

What really floats Khosla’s boat are ‘black swan solutions’, a small number of radical technologies that will provide 80% of the carbon benefits a decade from now. These, he says, won’t be any of the technologies touted by the greentech “experts”, and will have to be affordable in India and China – the ‘Chindia’ test. “I don’t subscribe to conventional opinion. Today’s unimaginable is tomorrow’s conventional wisdom. Experts are seldom right, and people listen to them much more than they should,” he says.

A knowledge junkie, Khosla stays in his various technologic loops by devouring a staggering array of reading material (he’s claims to have never read fiction in his life) and holding confabs with inventors and scientific genii. He relishes flexing his hard-earned smarts and is not averse to writing the odd peer-reviewed scientific paper or debating with his critics on environmental blogs such as Treehugger and Grist.“I’m not afraid to express an opinion,” he admits.

Roughly two thirds of Khosla Ventures’ portfolio is green. Around 50 of these investments are in outfits trying to reduce our dependence on hydrocarbons, either through greater efficiency or by discovering alternative sources of liquid fuel. There are also nods to building materials, geothermal, seawater desalination, and the aforementioned solar and wind. Some of the companies are too obscure, callow or secretive to even maintain websites.

Amyris Biotechnologies is a typical Khosla deal. Four years ago a scientist approached him with an idea to produce malaria drugs using synthetic biology. Today, the company is reprogramming microbes, or “bugs,” to function as living factories for the production of chemicals that resemble components in gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

By 2011, Amyris expects to produce 204 million gallons of biodiesel annually and generate a profit; jet fuel is set for 2013.“[It is a] great partnership,” Khosla says. “They were going to go from malaria drugs to fragrances, essences and nutraceuticals. I guided them into ‘how about jet fuel, diesel and powering out automobiles?’

KiOR is another. A Houston-based biofuel company intent on commercialising catalytic processes for converting biomass to high quality bio-crude, the company’s Dutch founder bailed from Europe after failing to secure investment. Khosla couldn’t resist.“That’s what gets me excited,” he says. “Most investors say ‘bring me safe things’, but I want crazy technologies that can change the world if they succeed!”

True to form, when pursuing battery technology breakthroughs, Khosla asked his team to only bring him deals with a 90% probability of failure – an ostensibly perverse stance for a venture capitalist.

“It doesn’t matter if you fail – the willingness to fail gives me the ability to succeed,” he says. Nevertheless, Khosla does expect a 50% or more hit rate on his current green investments.

The Khosla Ventures prospect attracting most attention at the moment is Calera. Founded by Stanford University professor Brent Constantz, the company claims to be able to capture CO2 emissions from coal- or gas-fuelled power facilities, cement plants and refineries, and convert them into solid carbonates that can be used as building materials or other cement-type materials.

Every ton of Calera building material can supposedly store as much as a half-ton of CO2 and, remarkably, the process, according to Khosla, also removes minerals and other constituents from water, producing fresh water in the process. A full commercial plant is due within the year. Khosla says it may be his biggest win ever, worth as much as General Electric’s entire power plant business, and “the only viable solution to carbon sequestration”, making coal-fired power more than “100% clean”.

Sensational claims – and a red rag for the vast majority of the environmental movement who consider the notion of ‘clean coal’ anathema – but one he resolutely stands by. “I believe this is the technology that makes coal carbon sequestration economic even without a price on carbon,” he says.“Now, that’s stunning! It’s what I call reinventing the infrastructure of the planet.”

Khosla grew up in an “Indian army household” in New Dehli, yearning for Silicon Valley while pouring over dog-eared copies of the Electronic Engineering Times, agog at the despatches from the cutting-edge and, in particular, the story of Intel’s start-up. After graduating with a degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, he received a scholarship to study biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. Next stop, Silicon Valley entrepreneurialism via the tried-and-trusted route of the Stanford MBA.

There was only one problem. Stanford didn’t want him. Bloody minded as ever, Khosla bombarded the dean’s office with calls for two years until he was admitted.

Once through the doors, he wasted no time in making his mark, forming Daisy Systems, a computer-aided design company, in 1980. The company went on to significant revenue, profits and an IPO, but Khosla, frustrated at having to design the computer hardware on which the Daisy software needed to be built, co-founded Sun Microsystems, with venture capitalist support from KPCB deity John Doerr, to build workstations for software developers.

“I realised somebody needed to build a more general computing platform that everybody could use,” he recalls. “The big transition was that it was the first serious computing done on microprocessors.”

He worked as CEO then chairman, but allegedly clashed with his co-founders over his overbearing manner and poor interpersonal skills. In 1985, after boycotting four board meetings in a row in protest, he walked. Khosla’s Sun Microsystems stake would eventually yield inordinate wealth, but he found himself at a loose end, and when Doerr offered him a position at KPCB he saw little reason to refuse.

Although he presided over some notable projects – for example, Go Computing, a firm making ahead-of-its time handheld devices and the Apple-inspiring DynaBook – when he succeeded, he really succeeded.

After foreseeing the need for a faster-paced internet revolution, he struck a series of stunning deals such as an $8m wager on optical equipment maker Cerent, whose value appreciated 300 times when it was acquired by Cisco for $8bn; router innovator Juniper Networks, which was bought by Cisco for $4.67bn; and internet portal Excite, sold to AtHome Corp for $6.7bn. In early 2001 Fortune named Khosla the “most successful venture capitalist of all time.

The billionaire was becoming restless however. Looking beyond the online vistas that made his name, he started to fixate on the potential of green technologies. In 2004, despite protestations from friends and colleagues, he left KPCB to go it alone and concentrate on his latest obsession.

Talking about his work, Khosla sounds content – happy to keep learning, keep moving, and keep immersing himself in ideas while betting on his conception of the future. Deep down, he doesn’t even consider himself an investor, more of an entrepreneurial mentor – a clued-in builder of visions rather than a dispassionate seeker of fortune. “I do this for fun, driven by intellectual curiosity,” he says.

“It’s about technical wonder – I’m entranced by that. I love the challenge of solving problems and the larger the problem, the bigger the challenge and the more opportunity there is for solutions. I don’t really care what other people think, I’m never going to run for political office. I don’t really need another job ever, so I do this as a hobby. I do it to stay interested. I don’t like yachting and I don’t like golf; I enjoy this.”