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Google's Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal

Creates renewable energy R&D group and supports breakthrough technologies

Mountain View, Calif. (November 27, 2007) – Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced a new strategic initiative to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. The newly created initiative, known as RE<C, will focus initially on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other potential breakthrough technologies. RE<C is hiring engineers and energy experts to lead its research and development work, which will begin with a significant effort on solar thermal technology, and will also investigate enhanced geothermal systems and other areas. 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 also 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."

Page added, "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."

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Solar and wind are already cheaper than coal. Coal just looks cheaper because of the industrial tax breaks/subsidies. I admire Google for coming up with a strategy that will ultimately have unsubsidized renewables cheaper than subsidized coal (which is the cheapest of the subsidized fossil and especially nuclear "conventional" fuels).

Frito-Lay is retrofitting one of their midsized NM potato chip plants to use solar thermal heat to generate electricity. They're also working on significantly reducing water usage. They are on track to be getting 60% or better of their power and heat from solar by 2010. If the pilot works, they'll be retrofitting all their plants. (The original figures had them spending slightly more on energy from renewables over the 25 year life of the project than if they'd stayed with conventional sources, but once oil hit $90 a barrel, the situation reversed.)