You may have been wondering why Kleiner Perkins, once the Valley's leading venture capital firm, hasn't had any big investment hits since Google. It couldn't possibly be that the firm, and John Doerr, it's most powerful partner, have simply missed the second coming of the internet. Only the small-minded would think that. As Kleiner partners explain in an interview, quoted after the jump, they're focused on a way bigger market, energy technology, which will surely revolutionize the way we commute as thoroughly as Doerr's last pet project, the Segway.

From an interview with Ray Lane and John Doerr in the Wall Street Journal, Kleiner's green investment machine: This is bigger than the Internet, I think by an order of magnitude. Maybe two. I'm taking the entire energy industry. The way we think of it half of our resources [mainstream investments, not including special funds] are going to green tech right now. You have some [Kleiner] partners that are spending part time [on clean tech], others are spending full time on it. For example, Bill Joy [who co-founded Sun Microsystems Inc., and recently joined Kleiner as a partner].... When he joined us, everybody thought he would be doing new architectures in chips and software. He's not. He's working on green sustainable innovations.