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AUSTIN, Texas - Mountain View, California-based Google has announced an initiative to produce  inexpensive electricity from renewable energy sources, and plans to invest over $200 million in projects promoting wind, solar, geothermal and other potential breakthrough technologies. Undermining Coal's Price Google's goal, according to Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, will be to develop electricity cheaper than that produced from coal, which is the primary power source for much of the world, beginning in 2008 with over $20 million earmarked for research and development, related investments, and to hire energy experts and engineers. The new initiative, which Google calls RE < C to denote "renewable energy is cheaper than coal", will begin by  focusing on solar thermal technology and enhanced geothermal systems, and Page sees the plans as a natural extension of work his company has already begun. "We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centers. 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 said, referring to the multitude of data centers Google has built around the world which help its search engine, by far the most used worldwide, achieve search results quickly. Page is also Google's President of Products. Turning New Technologies into Industries Expanding on work being done in solar thermal technology could spawn new industries according to Page. "There has been tremendous work already on renewable energy. Technologies have been developed that can mature into industries capable of providing electricity cheaper than coal," Page said. While solar thermal technologies will be one of the focal points early in the RE < C program, Google appears to see the potential for many others that could be promising and perhaps revolutionary. "Solar thermal technology, for example, provides a very plausible path to providing renewable energy cheaper than coal. We are also very interested in further developing other technologies that have potential to be cost-competitive and green. We are aware of several promising technologies, and believe there are many more out there," Page said. Through hiring the right people and partnering with companies working on alternative energy sources Google aims to work quickly to produce systems capable of generating one gigawatt of renewable energy, enough to power a city the size of San Francisco. "With talented technologists, great partners and significant investments, we hope to rapidly push forward. 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," Page said, and went on to suggest that the initiative could lead to reduced carbon emissions worldwide. "If we meet this goal, 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," Page said. Brin on Cheap Renewable Energy Google sees coal, used in the production of about 40 percent of the planet's electricity, as being a large  producer of greenhouse gases which it calls "one of our greatest environmental challenges," and hopes its RE < C initiative can lead to a reduction in the gases through making electricity less expensively than by using coal derived power. "Cheap renewable energy is not only critical for the environment but also vital for economic development in many places where there is limited affordable energy of any kind," said Brin, who is also Google's President of Technology. Google's philanthropic enterprise, Google.org, has already begun working with two companies involved in the kind of energy technologies Brin and Page hope to foster, those being Pasadena, California-based eSolar Inc. and Alameda, California-based Makani Power Inc. eSolar is active in solar thermal power technologies, while Makani Power is involved with methods used to harvest wind energy in high-altitude environments. Google.org was founded in 2004 as a for-profit subsidiary of Google. Google Hopes to Quicken Pace of Going Green The initiative hopes to help speed the development of promising alternative energy programs and perhaps creative revolutionary change, according to Dr. Larry Brilliant, Google.org's executive director. "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 help spark a green electricity revolution that will deliver breakthrough technologies priced lower than coal," Brilliant said. Google will begin working with universities, research and development laboratories, as well as companies and organizations in the renewable energy field, Google said. The initiative will also see Google.org making numerous grants and investments, according to yesterday's announcement. "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," Brilliant said. The initiative will be a part of Google's research and development group. Google's Green Gigawatt Renewable Energy Plan Google has had success in their own backyard, generating electricity for its Mountain View headquarters from a 1.6 Megawatt solar program, one of the largest in the United States. The initiative announced yesterday appears to be intended to reduce Google's own energy costs at its various worldwide data centers, using renewable energy systems that can be scaled to larger uses, and to combat climate change and cut back on the world's dependence on traditional fossil fuel sources. Whether Google has bitten off more than it can chew by expanding into renewable energy technologies, a far cry from from its mainstay Internet advertising business, may depend on how well the company can both fund and manage its now dizzying array of subsidiaries and programs. After the announcement, Google stock shares closed up more than one percent. Related Links:
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11:52 pm on Nov. 28, 2007 (utc 0)