Google to goose solar energy with its millions

Google is going ga-ga over green energy.

The world's best-known Internet company on Tuesday announced a far-reaching initiative to stimulate the development of solar and other renewable energy sources.

As part of the program, Google and its nonprofit foundation, Google.org, said it will earmark tens of millions of dollars to either spend on research and development or to invest in renewable energy in 2008.

In the longer term, it also plans to build solar power plants, invest in more renewable energy companies, and sell or license any energy-related technologies it develops to other companies.

In part, Google wants to find cheaper, more reliable power to run the giant, energy-sucking computer data centers it operates or plans to open in more than 25 locations around the world, including North Carolina.

But Google co-founder Larry Page said the company's ambitions extend far beyond its own business.

"Just providing energy for Google is not really enough of a goal," Page said in a conference call with reporters. "We really want to provide energy that's cheap enough that it can replace significant amounts of the energy that [is] used today."

Specifically, Google wants to develop technology to make solar and other energy sources less expensive than coal, which currently produces about 40 percent of the country's electricity but whose use releases large amounts of climate-warming gases into the atmosphere.

Google officials decline to say just how much power its data centers use. But by some estimates, the company spends at least $2 million a month on electricity to power its network of an estimated 450,000 computer servers.

Google has more than just cost-cutting and altruism in mind, however.

Page said the company expects to see returns "on a reasonable time scale" from its energy investments, either in the form of higher stock prices of the companies it invests in, in savings from producing its own power, or from the sale or licensing of solar and other technologies it develops.

Google, of course, isn't the only company that sees greenbacks in going green.

Atlanta media mogul Ted Turner, who has made big investments in solar energy lately, recently called the solar business "the greatest business opportunity in the history of humanity."

As with other companies, "Google's motivation is profit," said Pratap Chatterjee, an author and program manager at Corpwatch.org, a business watchdog group. "I'm not saying what Google is doing is bad, ... but they're not going to do something that's unprofitable."

Regardless, Google is increasingly becoming a vanguard for solar and other clean-energy technologies.

HQ solar array

This year, it switched on a solar panel array at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters that it claims is one of the biggest corporate solar installations in the world. Google's 1.6-megawatt array can produce enough electricity to power 1,000 homes.

Google in June also announced a $10 million program to fund development and commercialization of electric cars. So far, about 300 individuals and organizations have responded to the program, said Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google.org.

Brilliant said the latest energy initiative is a good example of how Google's business and philanthropic efforts can mesh well.

"It's a good business decision to create low-cost alternatives to coal as a source of our own power needs," Brilliant said.

"But it's an even greater social benefit if we can simultaneously create a technology pathway to let everybody ... have power that does not contribute to climate change."