NEW YORK (Reuters) - Venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has raised $500 million to target firms pursuing "green" projects and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co <KKR.UL> is teaming up with the Environmental Defense Fund to study its environmental performance, the Wall Street Journal said on Thursday.
Kleiner's energy-focused fund and one other will be announced on Thursday, bringing the total being raised by the firm to $1.2 billion, the report said.
Kleiner expects to invest from $10 million to $50 million in each of the companies and has hired a Goldman Sachs energy-investing expert to help run the fund, the report said.
A portion of the money for the fund will come from Generation Investment Management LLP, an investment firm co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, now a Kleiner partner, the report added.
Kleiner is a prominent Silicon Valley group that backed companies including Google Inc <GOOG.O> and Amazon.com Inc
<AMZN.O>.
The venture capital firm was not immediately available for comment.
The EDF and KKR, which owns companies like Toys "R" Us and Dollar General, will develop tools to gauge environmental performance in areas such as water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, the Journal and a separate report in the New York Times said.
KKR and the Environmental Defense Fund were not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Aarthi Sivaraman; Editing by Louise Ireland)
