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| Google and renewable energy goals
Google, headquartered in Mountain View, California, has announced an initiative
to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper
than electricity produced from coal.
The newly created initiative, known as RE<C, will focus initially on advanced
solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems
and other potential breakthrough technologies. RE<C is hiring engineers
and energy experts to lead its research and development work, which will
begin with a significant effort on solar thermal technology, and will also
investigate enhanced geothermal systems and other areas.
In 2008, Google expects to spend tens of millions on research
and development and related investments in renewable energy. As part of its
capital planning process, the company also anticipates investing hundreds
of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects which generate
positive returns.
“We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive
facilities by building efficient data centers,” said Larry Page, Google
co-founder and president of products. “We want to apply the same creativity
and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally
significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal.”
Page continued, “Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy
capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in
years, not decades.” (One gigawatt can power a city the size of San
Francisco.)
“If we meet this goal,” said Page, “and large-scale renewable
deployments are cheaper than coal, the world will have the option to meet
a substantial portion of electricity needs from renewable sources and significantly
reduce carbon emissions. We expect this would be a good business for us as
well.”
“Lots of groups are doing great work trying to produce inexpensive
renewable energy. We want to add something that moves these efforts toward
even cheaper technologies a bit more quickly. Usual investment criteria may
not deliver the super low-cost, clean, renewable energy soon enough to avoid
the worst effects of climate change,” said Dr. Larry Brilliant, executive
director of Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, “Google.org’s
hope is that by funding research on promising technologies, investing in
promising new companies and doing a lot of R&D ourselves, we may spark
a green electricity revolution that will deliver breakthrough technologies
priced lower than coal.”
Working with RE<C, Google.org will make strategic investments and grants
that demonstrate a path toward producing energy at an unsubsidized cost below
that of coal-fired power plants.
Google will work with a variety of organizations in the
renewable energy field, including companies, R&D laboratories, and universities. For example,
Google.org is working with two companies that have promising scalable energy
technologies:
- eSolar Inc., a Pasadena, California-based company specializing in solar
thermal power which replaces the fuel in a traditional power plant with
heat produced from solar energy. eSolar’s technology has great potential
to produce utility-scale power cheaper than coal.
- Makani Power Inc., an Alameda, California-based company developing
high-altitude wind energy extraction technologies aimed at harnessing the
most powerful wind resources. High-altitude wind energy has the potential
to satisfy a significant portion of current global electricity needs.
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