Google’s green energy czar Bill Weihl says that the internet giant has developed a new prototype mirror that could potentially halve the cost associated with building a solar thermal plant. Apparantly, not quite content with ruling the internet, the company wants some piece of the “physical” world too. It is still an internal prototype in early stages, but Bill Weihl says it could be ready for use in the next three years.
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Toyota Prius Hybrid Plugged In For Electricity

As the number of electric vehicles, or plug-in hybrids increases, there is a good chance that they may put greater strain on the grid with a lot of vehicles going for a recharge simultaneously. Google is currently working on a solution to this problem, by integrating vehicles with the electric grid so as to minimize strain and help utilities charge better.

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Call them philanthropic or just call them smart investors, the bottom line is that Google wants to provide an alternate solution to the greenhouse gases of laden coal power generation in the US.

Google's Green Energy Czar Bill Weih Inspecting Solar Panels

The Internet giant has openly claimed that the government isn’t taking risks enough to see fruitful achievements and that is where such plans falter. It is important to take investment risks to bring about a change.

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Although they didn’t announce a new Favicon change, Google came out with a huge announcement. They’ve just creating a free software tool that allows all users to monitor their home’s energy consumption and carbon footprint.

Image by missha

Dan Reicher, Director for Climate Change and Energy Initiatives Google, confirmed and also mentioned that the new software is being developed as we speak and will be ‘open source’.

This will allow you to understand how much energy each gadget in your home is consuming, how much energy is being wasted and which gadgets need to be thrown out in order to cut down on excessive carbon emissions. Also, studies revealed that this helps a home slash off about 5 to 15 percent of its electricity bill each month.

There are many gadgets out there in the market today that do the same, but with Google stepping in with a free tool like that, one can only expect more efficient and energy-savvy households to take shape. Isn’t it?

So when are we going to get our hands on this new green tool? Google has not given a set deadline as yet for that, but ‘soon’ is good enough of a promise for now.

[Reuters via Ecofriend]

According to stats given by Harvard University’s Alex Wissner-Gross, it would be safe to deduce that by just using the Google search, the world actually produces as much carbon dioxide as a country like Laos would do.

But how far are these claims real and if they indeed are true, do we really need to go ringing the alarm bells? According to Wissner-Gross, co-founder of Enernetics, two Google searches produce as much carbon dioxide as boiling enough water in an electric kettle for a cup of tea. And that is just the energy used up at Google’s end and not on our own system it seems.

The claims statistically might not really have much backing and to be honest it would be impossible to verify as there is no way Google is going to let you in to check on how much energy its hardware components eat and hence how much pollution it actually costs.

But the larger question on hand is about how the ICT sector is contributing to global warming and how it can actually cut back on its carbon footprint. It is already known that the carbon footprint of the ICT sector is as much as aviation- about 3% of the total carbon emissions produced.

But there is also little doubt that it is a necessity that we cannot escape and in fact saves more energy than it spends in the form of digital information. While we do hear the odd Yahoo and Google offices going green, Wissner-Gross’s statements do indeed merit a discussion. The net and its giants have a responsibility of going green to save energy, and they do indeed need to take the cause of the planet more seriously.

We wonder if that will help hasten the green wave, or not!

Source: Guardian
Image courtesy of Mark Knol

So, I wonder. How many points does Google want for throwing pocket change at an alternate fuel technology? The giant search engine machine pledged “10 million U.S. dollars in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) technology, as part of its Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative. ”

Two geothermal tech start-ups and a university will benefit from the grant. “EGS expands the potential of traditional geothermal energy by orders of magnitude,” said Google.org. EGS has the potential to provide clean renewable electricity 24/7, at a cost cheaper than coal.

AltaRock (cool name will get you money) Energy will get $6.25 million and Potter Drilling will get $4.25 million. SMU will get a grant of $489,521 (nice round number). Australia, Germany and the European Union are the technology leaders.  All 50 states have thermal resources accessible by EGS. Just gotta dig down and plug in. Or we can Iceland and/or Mitsubishi to see how they do it.

But, $10 million from a company that makes a profit of over $1 billion quarterly. That’s like a man with $4,000 to do go with giving away just $10 and hoping to make a difference.