Google has unveiled an initiative to develop electricity from clean sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. In true geek fashion, they’re calling it “RE less than C” or “Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal.” Co-founder Larry Page said the initiative would spend “tens of millions of dollars on R&D,” and ultimately hopes to produce a “gigawatt of renewable energy capacity,” in years, not decades. Continue reading at Earth2Tech.
seems, now is the time for EDF, and GE to tighten their belt? – intentions are good but seems Google have too much on plate.
I think this is great, everyone seems to be hopping on this bandwagon and I wouldn’t expect any less from Google.
If coal burners had to pay for the carbon that they pumped into the atmosphere, then renewables would already be cheaper. This is a major flaw in our system. Dumping waste into the commons is basically subsidized by the people instead of charged to the polluter.
I am convinced that Google is still evil:
http://kaiyzen.com/?p=11
But in all seriousness…, its great to see more and more exposure on the topic of clean energy. You know Mr Doerr is helping bring some of these ideas to the fore front in Googleland…, as well as the VC world.
The quicker truckloads of $$$ can be made off of clean energy…, the quicker/greater the adoptance there will be.
Not really sure what that has to do with search. I’m sure Wall St is wondering the same thing.
@cyclepromo:
No, the only thing Wall St. cares about is making money and profitability. “Going Green” or at least helping a green power initiative will help be a profitability booster. Wall St. could care less that their main thing is search. Google’s data centers use so much power to run all those servers, that this move actually does make sense.
Unless they are planning on going nuclear, or know about some mystical energy source the public don’t, this is impossible. Even with nuclear, it would be a stretch to generate electricity cheaper than ‘dirty’ coal plants.
More a publicity stunt than any sort of real commitment, I suspect.
IT makes perfect business sense and GOOG is doing what henry ford did in early part of 20th century.
http://www.gandalf-lab.com/blog/2007/11/google-energy-and-vertical-integration.html