Google's Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal

Google ^ | 2007-11-27 | Google

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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"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."

[Kellis91789]

If you read the eSolar paper referenced in the Google press release, you’d see that their idea of “cheaper than coal” is not a plant that is cheaper than coal a coal plant, but cheaper than a coal plant + the fuel cost of coal. You see the problem ? As they succeed in replacing the demand for coal, bit by bit, the price of coal will fall with the falling demand. That means that their formula doesn’t work. They need to be able to build a solar plant that is cheaper than a coal plant — including the assumption that coal is FREE, because if they are successful, coal WILL be free at some point.

Not to mention, I’ll bet they are including tax credits, rebates, etc. for Solar in their calculations.

This is not the business plan that technological progress follows. Real progress comes when the new solution is cheaper than the previous technology from the get-go.

[Kellis91789]

“For one, with a big differential between electricity and diesel, you can electrify more rail tracks, for example, and displace an awful lot of diesel fuel.”

I won’t hold my breath waiting for railroads to spend tens of billions of dollars electrifying hundreds of thousands of miles of rail and retrofitting their engines.

Google’s press release says “years rather than decades”, but there is huge investment in all the transportaion infrastructure and vehicles, and a transition is not going to be quick.

I have no problem with Google investing in renewable energy. I have a problem with the over-promising of the time-frame and all the caveats to their statements about “cheaper than coal”. It is misleading, especially if people don’t understand that energy sources are NOT easily substitutable, and even FREE electricity would take decades to replace middle eastern oil.

[Uncledave]

if they are successful, coal WILL be free at some point.

It would seem to me that most of the cost of coal comes from digging it up and shipping it. That's a lot of fixed cost and will never be anywhere near "free".

[Kellis91789]

Sure it will :-)

Somebody will deem it carcinogenic toxic waste at some point and pay for it to be dug up at taxpayer expense so it won’t poison the water supply. Then the existing coal plants will be PAID to burn it instead of having to BUY it.