Google to invest millions into finding limitless sources of energy  (Pravda)
 
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:01:20 -0600 (CST)

Google to invest millions into finding limitless sources of energy
http://english.pravda.ru/business/companies/101811-google_energy-0

Google, the Internet company with a seemingly limitless source of revenue,
plans to get into the business of finding limitless sources of energy.

The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., 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
Googles own mounting energy costs to run its vast data centers, while
also fighting climate change and helping to reduce the worlds dependence
Google to invest millions into finding limitless sources of energy  (Pravda)
 
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:01:20 -0600 (CST)

Google to invest millions into finding limitless sources of energy
http://english.pravda.ru/business/companies/101811-google_energy-0

Google, the Internet company with a seemingly limitless source of revenue,
plans to get into the business of finding limitless sources of energy.

The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., 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
Googles own mounting energy costs to run its vast data centers, while
also fighting climate change and helping to reduce the worlds 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 dont see people talking about
that as much as we would like.

The initiative, which Google is calling RE<C, using mathematical symbols
to denote renewable energy cheaper than coal, will be based in Googles
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 companys idealism may
ultimately distract it from its core businesses of organizing the worlds
information and selling online ads, nytimes.com reports.

My first reaction when I read about this was, Is this a joke? said
Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets. Ive written off Googles
competition as a threat to Googles long-term market share gains. But I
havent written off Googles own ability to stretch too far and try to do
too much. Ultimately, that is the biggest risk in the Google story.

Google, now the sixth-largest U.S. company by market value, is taking
advantage of its size, a growing mountain of cash, and global brand
recognition in launching the campaign.

Officials said Google is targeting renewable energy that could produce a
gigawatt of energy at prices, when investments are fully amortized, of 3
cents per kilowatt hour or lower.

"We think we need to get in the range of 1 to 3 cents per kilowatt hour to
be cheaper than coal," said Bill Weihl, who carries the title of Green
Energy Czar at Google.

The push comes as oil prices near $100 a barrel and coal, which generates
40 percent of the world's electricity, faces regulatory and environmental
pressures that may boost prices.

"If they can do it cheaper than coal, then that's the Holy Grail," said
Mark Manley, alternative fuels analyst at Natixis Bleichroeder. "If they
figure it out, it will take off."

But he and other analysts warned that Google's hundreds of millions of
dollars earmarked for the projects are unlikely to make a dent in the
multitrillion-dollar energy market.

"This is a tall order to fill," Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst with
Raymond James wrote in a research note to investors. He said solar energy
is not cost-competitive with conventional grid electricity in any major
market.

If successful in generating power at prices below coal, Google would put
the technology to work to slow climate change resulting from increased
global coal and oil consumption.

"I don't want to overstate (our goal) too much," Page told Reuters in an
interview. "Our goal is to do it in a way that could be applied to a
significant amount of the electric generation in the world."

Google plans to spend tens of millions of dollars in 2008 on renewable
energy development and other efforts. Its initial focus will be solar
thermal and enhanced geothermal systems.

Eventually, the company would spend hundreds of millions of dollars in
for-profit "breakthrough renewable energy projects." Hydroelectric and
nuclear energy are not part of the project, Reuters reports.

Source: agencies