Google Gets Into Green Tech

“We see technologies we think can mature into very capable industries that can generate electricity cheaper than coal, and we don’t see people talking about that as much as we would like.”
- Larry Page, co-founder of Google

November 29, 2007 —

On Tuesday, Google announced that it plans to invest heavily in renewable energy technologies in the coming years. The project, which Google is calling "RE<C" — renewable energy cheaper than coal — will initially focus on solar thermal technologies. The goal is to create technologies and infrastructure capable of producing one gigawatt of electricity (enough to power San Francisco) within the next few years.

Google is already one of the greenest companies in the United States and we've written about their environmental credentials here in the past, but an investment totaling hundreds of millions of dollars into green tech is probably a new a high for them. Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, says the investment came partially out of the frustration the company has encountered in its search for renewables to power its operations:

It’s very hard to find options that aren’t coal-based or other dirty technologies. We don’t feel good about being in that situation as a company. We feel hypocritical. We want to make investments happen so there will be alternatives for us to use down the road.