Can Google improve green technology?
Well-known cleantech investor Google is looking further afield – all the way to Europe – for green energy opportunities, according to its head of green business, Ben Kott.
Kott told Reuters at a briefing in London that Google was looking at power generation projects in Europe. Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm, has been branching out from investments near its California base to a $39 million bet on a North Dakota wind farm and now, possibly, to Europe.
Is there a strategy here?
It’s difficult to discern.
Google.org has broadly outlined its green principles through the slogan RE<C (develop renenewable energy cheaper than coal) and has a three-step plan.
1) make grants and investments in renewable energy
2) advance public policy to accelerate development of renewables
3) use Google products to enable innovation and raise awareness
Parts 2 and 3 of the plan are easy enough; company executives have been vocal in their support of green energy policies and are trying to cut energy waste through its smart metering application, PowerMeter.
But the company, which has hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on green energy ventures, has been all over the place with part 1.
Google started off with venture capital-style investments in companies with promising technology such as BrightSource Energy, eSolar, SilverSprings Networks and AltaRock Energy.
The investments have met with varying degrees of success – BrightSource scored a $1.37 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy for its Ivanpah Solar Power Complex in February and has overcome regulatory and conservation hurdles.
Meanwhile, Geothermal developer AltaRock abandoned its Geysers drilling project near San Francisco amidst (though not necessarily because of ) concerns about whether digging deep into the earth could trigger earthquakes.
Having dabbled in emerging technologies, Google’s Green Business Operations Manager Rick Needham said the company’s next step is investment in the 169.5 megawatt wind farm, developed by NextEra Energy Resources.
This is where it gets confusing.
Needham, in his blog post on the investment, talks about the need to
accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects.
But is there any particular reason to invest in a project in North Dakota, other than a general commitment to corporate responsibility? What about Europe?
It seems that Google.org is mired in an internal debate that mirrors the biggest dispute in green energy – what we might call the Revkin/Bell Labs vs. Romm/deployment split.
Does Google devote its resources to funding a greentech Bell Labs for the next millennium that will create the technological innovations necessary to supplant coal?
Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin, among others, advocates this approach to green energy.
On the other side, we have Climate Progress blogger Joseph Romm, who believes that the technology necessary to save mankind already exists and simply needs to be deployed. We don’t have time for whiz-bang innovations, Romm says, which will take 25 years to gain just 1 percent of the market.
Google’s wind farm bet follows this strategy.
The implications of this split are clear for Google: it can double down on innovation in the hope that its bets on technology can make green energy affordable and scalable or it can devote resources to proven technologies that will deliver real megawatts to customers – and perhaps even become carbon neutral in the process.
Put another way, should Google build a better windmill or build lots of them? It can’t do both effectively with only.
A few investments in promising technologies and in wind farms scattered around the globe is not going to change the world.
And isn’t changing the world what Google is about?
Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
