ENVIRONMENT - Gore's latest green venture - The former VP and Nobel laureate joins a Silicon Valley firm that funds climate solutions.

Venture capital dollars are pouring into the business of fighting climate change, and Gore will get to invest millions as a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a prominent Silicon Valley venture firm.

The Menlo Park firm, which was an early investor in Google Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and hundreds of other high-tech companies, is betting heavily on start-ups working on solar energy, biofuels, water treatments and other solutions to environmental problems.

Gore, who recently won a Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm about climate change, is expected to help Kleiner Perkins win more deals. He gives its portfolio companies a powerful political ally who can mine his connections to Fortune 500 chief executives, lawmakers and government officials.

There's already plenty of money to go around. Venture capitalists pumped $892 million into U.S. green tech companies in the first half of 2007, up nearly 70% from $525 million in the same period a year earlier, according to Ernst & Young and Dow Jones Venture One.

The attention is bound to increase with Gore taking a hand in investing the money that universities, pension funds and other big clients contribute with the expectation of hefty returns.

What's less clear is whether those new businesses can generate substantial profit. Green tech has yet to produce a dazzling initial public offering to announce its arrival, like the Internet had in 1995 with Netscape Communications Corp. -- another Kleiner Perkins company.

In an interview, Gore acknowledged that environmental investing had become fashionable but said he planned to work with experts to sift through many ideas to find the good ones.

"There is a flood of money coming into this area," he said. "A lot of it is undisciplined. When you open the hood and look inside, you see people shrugging their shoulders and saying, 'We don't know what we're going to do.' There is a much smaller flow that is channeled through disciplined, experienced, highly organized, professional teams."

Concerns about climate change have driven the fundingboom, said Joe Muscat, Americas director of Ernst & Young's venture capital advisory group. The company forecasts that $2 billion will be invested this year in companies working on green technologies in North America, Israel, Europe and China.