By now, everyone is familiar with Google’s corporate motto, “Don’t be evil.” In an effort to spread that message of not-being-evil, the search engine behemoth has announced a plan to develop sources of renewable energy that will be cheaper than coal. The new initiative, RE<C, (renewable energy is cheaper than coal) will begin by focusing on solar power technology, and will also encompass geothermal energy production.
RE<C’s plan, in conjunction with Google’s philanthropic Google.org, is to drive the development of cheaper alternative energy through the use of grants and investments. According to Dr. Larry Brilliant, head of Google.org, the “hope is that by funding research on promising technologies, investing in promising new companies, and doing a lot of R&D ourselves, we may help spark a green electricity revolution that will deliver breakthrough technologies priced lower than coal.”
The company itself is also trying hard to reduce its drain on the environment. Google is working to reduce the energy expenditure of its data centers across the world, all of which need power and cooling for the servers, and plans to be carbon neutral by the end of the current year. It has also been developing an array of solar cells to power its California headquarters, the Googleplex, and is involved in an initiative to arrive at more energy-efficient computers.
With all signs pointing to an increased scarcity of resources in an world growing ever more crowded, philanthropic efforts such as this one by Google are very much needed. Although energy produced by burning fossil fuels has a high social cost when climate change and pollution are taken into account, those costs are not borne upfront. When short-term shareholder value and the need to maximize profit remains the number one priority for corporations, those businesses have no reason to not use the cheapest energy source they can, regardless of its effect on everyone else.
Presumably, the idea behind this move is as follows: if you can’t persuade people that burning coal is a bad idea ecologically, providing them with a cheaper, cleaner alternative makes it more expensive to pollute than not, and even if shareholders don’t care about the trees, they’ll care about the bottom line. At a time when report after report highlights the growing damage done to the planet through the use of fossil fuels, this move by Google to spur renewable energy uptake ought to be applauded.
By Jonathan M. Gitlin | Published: November 27, 2007 - 01:49PM CT
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