Google searches for cheap, clean electricity
Google has gone environmental with its Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal initiative. Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, plans to devote hundreds of millions of dollars to look at nonpolluting technologies to generate electricity, competitive with what has been the norm for the last 100 years—burning black rocks.
Google plans to do its own research by hiring its own energy experts and engineers, saying that renewable energy has to be taken to the next level if the impact of fossil fuel on climate is to be tackled effectively.
Larry Page, Google co-founder, said in a statement released to the New York Times: “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 coal.”
“With talented technologists, great partners and significant investments, we hope to rapidly push forward,” he added, saying that Google’s goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. One gigawatt can power a city the size of San Francisco, one of California’s biggest cities.
Working with REC, Google will be making strategic investments and offering grants that demonstrate a path toward producing energy that is cheaper than coal-fired power plants. Solar thermal technology will be given attention, as climate and energy experts have long wanted the government and private sector to take on the challenge of diverting the world from its growing appetite for fossil fuels.
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, CA-based company specializes in solar thermal power which replaces the fuel in a traditional power plant with heat produced from the sun’s energy. eSolar’s technology has high probability to produce power cheaper than coal.
Meanwhile, Makani Power Inc., an Alameda, CA-based company, is currently developing high-altitude wind energy extraction technologies meant to harness the earth’s most powerful wind resources. Makani Power Inc. maintains that high-altitude wind energy has the potential to satisfy a significant portion of current global electricity needs.
“Solar energy is currently more expensive than coal, but we see a lot of evidence from all the people working hard on this that the costs can come down quite a bit,” said Page.
Google thinks that with the help of companies dedicated to researching and developing cost-efficient energy, renewable energy can eventually be priced at 1-3 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Google admits that it is an ambitious goal to create renewable energy that is cheaper than today’s use of coal. Nevertheless, the company believes the goal is obtainable, and that it will have a huge impact on climate change and, ultimately, the world’s economies.
“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.”
Supplying 40% of the world’s electricity, coal is the main source of power for many cities worldwide. The greenhouse gases that coal produces on a daily basis is the developing world’s greatest environmental challenges. Google believes that making electricity produced from renewable energy cheaper than coal would be a key part of reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions.
Sergey Brin, Google Co-founder and President of Technology, added, “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.”
