Gore joins Kleiner Perkins as partner

MENLO PARK, Calif., Nov. 12 (UPI) -- Al Gore is joining a prominent Silicon Valley, Calif., venture-capital firm to advise it on investments to help fight global warming, the firm said Monday.

The 59-year-old former U.S. vice president -- who along with a U.N. panel won a Nobel Peace Prize last month for work on climate change -- is joining Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers of Menlo Park, Calif., as a partner, the firm said.

Kleiner also plans to work with Generation Investment Management LLP, an investment firm Gore and former Goldman Sachs executive David Blood founded in 2004.

Generation invests mainly in larger companies it deems environmentally and socially responsible. Kleiner focuses on smaller, newer companies.

Gore, who starred in the Academy Award-winning global-warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," told The Wall Street Journal he would be "involved in the full Kleiner portfolio related to Greentech," focusing on "clean, green and sustainable technologies," and would help Generation and Kleiner work together.

Gore -- who sits on the Apple Inc. board and is a Google Inc. adviser -- said he would donate his undisclosed Kleiner salary to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a Palo Alto, Calif., advocacy group he co-founded.

Kleiner's last big-name political hire is former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was named a "strategic limited partner" in 2005 but does not serve on any Kleiner company boards.