GOOGLE GOES GAA-GAA FOR NEW ENERGY

Is Google selflessly safeguarding earth? Sort of. But Google operates enormous data centers and needs lower electricity prices. If New Energy sources don’t produce power at lower prices, the cost will inevitably rise as climate change concerns force utilities to include the price of carbon into their rates.

Google will also own rights to any breakthrough technology its R&D funds generate. So it stands to do well by doing good in that way, too.

New Energy (wind, sun, marine, geothermal and other renewables) is inevitable because it's a game where everybody wins. That’s why Old Energy (fossil fuels and nuclear) is fighting so hard to keep it a game they win and everybody else loses. But Old Energy is only fighting the future.

Google’s big bet on renewable energy; Search giant vows to spend hundreds of millions on new technologies
Verne Kopytoff, November 27, 2007 (San Francisco Chronicle)

WHO
Google Inc. (Larry Page & Sergey Brin, co-founders, Bill Weihl, New Energy head)

Google's Mountain View, CA, campus is powered by a huge solar array.

WHAT
In an effort to drive technological breakthroughs that will bring costs down, Google announced a project of investment in New Energy research and development it is calling "Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal."

WHEN
Immediate plans call for investments of tens of millions in 2008.

This continuously updated online display reports the output of Google's solar panel project.

WHERE
- Few specifics have been released but partners will include innovative companies, universities and labs.
- Google presently works with ESolar of Pasadena and Makani Power of Alameda.

WHY
- Google uses so much electricity to run its data centers it will not state the amount. Its Mountain View facility’s solar panel project displays a continuous update of its output.
- Google will own rights to technologies its R&D funds produce.
- ESolar designs and builds solar thermal power plants. Makani Power is developing high altitude wind energy concepts.
- Google will hire engineers to work solar thermal and geothermal concepts.
Weihl says the competitive level for the price of New Energy would be 1 to 3 cents/kilowatt-hour.

Google's founders intend to take the blessings of solar power beyond the Googleplex.

QUOTES
Page, Google: "Solar isn't currently cheaper than coal…That's the point of this - to get it there."