Google’s green plans move to renewable energy market

The week was buzzing with the news that Google is moving into electricity, although the company itself has not issued an official statement on the new move yet. The project is called Google Energy.

Reuters reports that Google “has asked the main U.S. energy regulator for authority to trade electricity in the wholesale market, which will make it easier for the Internet search giant to obtain renewable energy to power its huge data centers as part of its green initiative.”

The initiative, says spokeswoman Niki Fenwick, is part of Google’ green plans toward carbon neutrality but the company doesn’t intend to branch out into energy as a new line of business, except by selling surplus renewable energy it may not use.

The Atlantic comments that Google’s energy move is not so much a bid for world domination as some may wonder, but rather, a way to protect its profit margins as the company literally lives on electricity. And although the company’s motivation is economic, the announcement has a potentially positive impact on more environmentally-friendly renewable energy.

According to the Green section on Google’s corporate website, the company’s data centers use about half the energy of a typical data center, which makes a Google search “very energy efficient” (1kJ, or 0.0003 kWh of energy, to answer the average query). A glass of orange equals 1,050 searches, the company says.

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