Tuesday, November 27th 2007
Google Plans to Investigate and Develop Renewable Energy
Google announced Tuesday that it intended to develop and help stimulate the creation of renewable energy technologies that are cheaper than coal-generated power. Google said it would spend hundreds of millions of dollars, part of that to hire engineers and energy experts to investigate alternative energies like solar, geothermal and wind power. The effort is aimed at reducing Google's own mounting energy costs to run its vast data centers, while also fighting climate change and helping to reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels.
"We see technologies we think can mature into very capable industries that can generate electricity cheaper than coal," said Larry Page, a Google founder and president of products, "and we don't see people talking about that as much as we would like." The initiative will be based in Google's research and development group. The company also said that Google.org, the philanthropic for-profit subsidiary that Google seeded in 2004 with three million shares of its stock, would invest in energy start-ups. Google says its goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy - enough to power the city of San Francisco - more cheaply than coal-generated electricity. The company predicted that this can be accomplished in "years, not decades." For some Wall Street analysts, the most relevant question is not whether Google can save the world, but whether the company's idealism may ultimately distract it from its core businesses of organizing the world's information and selling online ads. "My first reaction when I read about this was, 'Is this a joke?'" said Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets. "I've written off Google's competition as a threat to Google's long-term market share gains. But I haven't written off Google's own ability to stretch too far and try to do too much. Ultimately, that is the biggest risk in the Google story." Robert Peck of Bear Stearns agreed that "the headlines were a little scary at first" and said investors were initially worried that this was another example of Google "trying to bite off more than they can chew." But Google's stock closed up more than 1 percent Tuesday in a higher market, Mr. Peck said, when investors "realized this is more of a Google.org initiative and backed off." Mr. Page, in an interview, said that failing to investigate new businesses could hurt Google more than any potential distraction. "If you look at companies that don't do anything new," he said, "they are guaranteed never to get bigger. They miss a lot of opportunities and they miss the next big things." As part of the initiative, executives at Google.org said they are working with two companies that have "promising, scalable energy technologies." One of these, eSolar, based in Pasadena, Calif., uses thousands of small mirrors to concentrate sunlight and generate steam that powers electric generators. The other, Makani Power of Alameda, Calif., is developing wind turbines that will run on powerful and generally more predictable winds at high altitudes. In a conference call Tuesday with reporters, Sergey Brin, Google's other founder and president of technology, said the effort was motivated in part by the company's frustrating search for clean, cheap energy alternatives. "It's very hard to find options that aren't coal-based or other dirty technologies," he said. "We don't feel good about being in that situation as a company. We feel hypocritical. We want to make investments happen so there will be alternatives for us to use down the road." Both founders declined to specify what the company now spends on energy. Idealism is hardly new at Google. In their Letter From the Founders before the company's 2004 initial public stock offering, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin wrote: "Our goal is to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. In pursuing this goal, we may do things that we believe have a positive impact on the world, even if the near-term financial returns are not obvious." Mr. Rohan of RBC Capital Markets said that the returns were not obvious. "The only positive byproduct of this project that would be anything other than environmental," he said, "is that it might make Google managers and executives even prouder of the fact that they work there, and it may help retain key employees who think their goal is to do good in the world. But I'm really stretching." Google is only the latest Fortune 500 company to embrace green technologies. Also Tuesday, Hewlett-Packard said it would install a one-megawatt solar electric power system at its manufacturing plant in San Diego, and buy 80 gigawatt-hours of wind energy in Ireland next year. H.P. said that together, the agreements would save it around $800,000 in energy costs.
Source:
The New York Times
"We see technologies we think can mature into very capable industries that can generate electricity cheaper than coal," said Larry Page, a Google founder and president of products, "and we don't see people talking about that as much as we would like." The initiative will be based in Google's research and development group. The company also said that Google.org, the philanthropic for-profit subsidiary that Google seeded in 2004 with three million shares of its stock, would invest in energy start-ups. Google says its goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy - enough to power the city of San Francisco - more cheaply than coal-generated electricity. The company predicted that this can be accomplished in "years, not decades." For some Wall Street analysts, the most relevant question is not whether Google can save the world, but whether the company's idealism may ultimately distract it from its core businesses of organizing the world's information and selling online ads. "My first reaction when I read about this was, 'Is this a joke?'" said Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets. "I've written off Google's competition as a threat to Google's long-term market share gains. But I haven't written off Google's own ability to stretch too far and try to do too much. Ultimately, that is the biggest risk in the Google story." Robert Peck of Bear Stearns agreed that "the headlines were a little scary at first" and said investors were initially worried that this was another example of Google "trying to bite off more than they can chew." But Google's stock closed up more than 1 percent Tuesday in a higher market, Mr. Peck said, when investors "realized this is more of a Google.org initiative and backed off." Mr. Page, in an interview, said that failing to investigate new businesses could hurt Google more than any potential distraction. "If you look at companies that don't do anything new," he said, "they are guaranteed never to get bigger. They miss a lot of opportunities and they miss the next big things." As part of the initiative, executives at Google.org said they are working with two companies that have "promising, scalable energy technologies." One of these, eSolar, based in Pasadena, Calif., uses thousands of small mirrors to concentrate sunlight and generate steam that powers electric generators. The other, Makani Power of Alameda, Calif., is developing wind turbines that will run on powerful and generally more predictable winds at high altitudes. In a conference call Tuesday with reporters, Sergey Brin, Google's other founder and president of technology, said the effort was motivated in part by the company's frustrating search for clean, cheap energy alternatives. "It's very hard to find options that aren't coal-based or other dirty technologies," he said. "We don't feel good about being in that situation as a company. We feel hypocritical. We want to make investments happen so there will be alternatives for us to use down the road." Both founders declined to specify what the company now spends on energy. Idealism is hardly new at Google. In their Letter From the Founders before the company's 2004 initial public stock offering, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin wrote: "Our goal is to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. In pursuing this goal, we may do things that we believe have a positive impact on the world, even if the near-term financial returns are not obvious." Mr. Rohan of RBC Capital Markets said that the returns were not obvious. "The only positive byproduct of this project that would be anything other than environmental," he said, "is that it might make Google managers and executives even prouder of the fact that they work there, and it may help retain key employees who think their goal is to do good in the world. But I'm really stretching." Google is only the latest Fortune 500 company to embrace green technologies. Also Tuesday, Hewlett-Packard said it would install a one-megawatt solar electric power system at its manufacturing plant in San Diego, and buy 80 gigawatt-hours of wind energy in Ireland next year. H.P. said that together, the agreements would save it around $800,000 in energy costs.
35 Comments on Google Plans to Investigate and Develop Renewable Energy
Next thing you know Google will be investigating how to create tropical islands.
Anyway, GO GOOGLE! It's really funny how far technology has gone and that we're still dependent on coal and oil. Hopefully they can turn that around.. it'll be really interesting to see what they come up with, especially considering their near-unlimited resources.
I hope your not serious.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_island
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands
japans kansai airport, the means of artificial land making was used to extend the area to accomodate bigger runways and what not
I am correct and you know it!
The same people that are fighting coal fired power plants are the same people who fought against nuclear power 30 years ago - resulting in mass coal fired plants. Solar and Wind are not a reliable or viable answers to replacing coal plants.
Let's consider what would happen if we replace all coal plants with wind energy.... there'd be less wind, and that would cause climate change....... go figure.
I personaly would lean more toward useing Solar Power or some other sort of self gernerating electrical circuit that can produce zero resistance useing superconductivity.
Imagine having a generator roating at the will of a motor, which is inturn being powered by the very own generator it is roating. Having such a setup as this one would mean a self sustaining power sourse. However their is a major flaw with such a setup as this one, all electrical current produces heat and with that heat power is lost, so in order for such a power source to be fesable, man kind would first have to find a way to reach absoult zero out of a laboratory and in some sort of "power plant".
Hopefully google will discover some new source of renewable energy that will shock the world. Also, I think I read someones post saying that having to many windmills would lead to less less wind:twitch:, you have got to be joking and to someone else who said that "their isn't a damn thing we can do about the climate changing", I have to strongly disagree with that comment, for many oveous reasons.
What are you libs more afraid of - A possible, yet not probable meltdown, or the global catastrophe crisis infernal ball of hellfire death that is man-made global warming? Bombs. Dude... you remind me of my lib-aunt who told me that cars should have a windmill on top of them to collect energy and help power the car........
You wouldn't be using all windmills because you would also have a mixture of solar/nuclear/hydroelectric/waste energy, also the new Hydrogen fuel cells.
That incident happened in Russia because there were practically no safety standards in Russia.
Bombs aren't the solution, we need to find an actual use for nuclear waste besides killing people.