Google today announced its strategic initiative to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. The newly created initiative, known as R< EC, will focus initially on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other potential breakthrough technologies.
In 2008, Google expects to spend tens of millions on research and development and related investments in renewable energy. As part of its capital planning process, the company said it anticipates investing hundreds of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects which generate positive returns.
“We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centers,” said Larry Page, Google Co-founder and President of Products. “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.
“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. 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.”
We at Energy Refuge applaud Google’s initiative which hopefully will have a significant impact on the renewable energy market. For the full statement please click here.
Google is great.