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Google Goes Green
foobsr writes "Google today announced its RE<C project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal in the near future. The company, and its charitable arm google.org, plan to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the initiative. Larry Page stated: 'With talented technologists, great partners and significant investments, we hope to rapidly push forward. Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades.'"
Spent fuel -> breeder reactor -> fissionable fuel, and it's already cheaper than coal.
Oh wait, we don't like that kind of renewable resource...
These are the kinds of initiatives that one can applaud when they're coming from a public company. Interestingly, this isn't just an idle PR stunt, or vain charity. While Google expects to invest "tens of millions" into pilot projects, they also are committing themselves to investing "hundreds of millions" into those projects that are likely to yield positive returns.
I have spent so long lamenting the short-sightedness of American business, that it's easy to overlook the fact that at least some companies are willing to stake their immediate earnings on potentially much greater gains in the future. It's therefore very nice to see Google at the forefront of energy innovation because, let's face it, as a geek, that's exactly where I'd be pouring a fair portion of my post-billionaire funds. That and space... but alas Brin hasn't decided to finance his own airospace company YET...
It's just a matter of time until the cost of coal rises to a higher level than the cost of renewables, google could just sit back and watch if they wanted to and their goal would still be met.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I would've thought it was easy to produce one gigawatt of renewable power cheaper than coal. Just subsidise, subsidise, subsidise, and sell on the equipment when you're done. Easy. Okay, maybe it doesn't scale too well...
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Wind might always blow at very high altitudes - but solar works only during the day. So, you either have storage, you ramp coal power plants up and down from day to night, or black out the customers
Name their companies. Even then, does it matter? Most of this Google press release is simple headline grabbing. Where are the dollar figures of what is going where? Are they working alongside other large companies trying to do the same or cherry picking companies they can snap up later for their investment?
Frankly Gates doesn't have to do anything in the renewable energy market, what he is doing through his foundation is saving more lives than can be counted, not exploiting current pc trends towards "everything global warming", doing proven work that benefits people today. Hell, his foundation is more important than Microsoft in my book. Trade some "evil" here for worlds of good elsewhere.
As for Apple, they list many iniatives. Why do they have to be energy related to qualify for points? They do a lot in the recycling arena. They make a big thing out of ensuring their equipment is recyclable and is moving to using non-dangerous/polluting means of making it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The machines in The Matrix story were so dumb.
Skies darkened to block out the Sun so that their solar power sources would be negated? Well, duh. What was stopping them from building taller solar power collectors that were above the black stuff? Neo and Trinity penetrated the layer, didn't they?
Alternatively, they could have used whatever power source the remaining free humans were using: Zion wasn't powered by human batteries, was it?
Worst Plot Hole Ever.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Yeah, it's a pretty sad state of affairs.
With even Patrick Moore (the founder of Greenpeace) realising that nuclear power (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html) is the way forward, so-called "environmentalists" need to get a clue. The nuclear waste argument is almost entirely moot thanks breeder reactors, as has already been pointed out.
There are more deaths in the coal industry per measure of power produced, than in the nuclear power industry (including mining, catastrophes, meltdowns).
The fact that some environmentalists actually attempt to hinder the obviously superior, and obviously more environmentally healthy option of nuclear power is a testament to their reactionary and brainless nature.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Is greed really so easily confused for peak production?
Either way, the correct course of action is still strikingly clear. Move away from it. As quickly as possible. Either we escape an artificially-created economic sink, or we reduce our dependence on a an energy source that is in its twilight. Win-Win, if you ask me.
What is the problem? Hydro power is already cheaper than coal. It is renewable. It can be produced at any time of day. It is relatively easy to store with no loss over time. You can even use solar power during the day to pump water to a higher dam and produce power during the night. Much more efficient than storing power in a battery. Entire countries are powered by hydro power alone, and there is pleny more availiable.
Hydro power share one problem with solar. It is not easily availiable everywhere at all times of the year, and electrical power is not as easy to transport in over long distances as many believe.
there is often plenty of electrical power gen, albeit some of it quite polluting but a lot that is not like hydro, but there is almost always a lack of transmission lines, think lack of modern tech and tons of lawyers/nimbys. investing in alt power gen is great but their needs to be lines to deliver it. also, not only are there a lack of lines a lot of power is lost in transmission. also, lack of transmission lines is the largest current contributing factor to the rise in electrical rates since the decision who gets to deliver power is decided in an auction that makes ebay look like kids stuff. this is no cakewalk. i wish googlers well.
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
You know, from the moon or the asteroids? It's 'zero-sum' NOW, but that may change in the future.
Blar.
The US and other major world economies already went thru this "Peak Oil" crisis, although they didn't use that specific term at the time. Nevertheless, there were no shortage of educated economists predicting absolute DOOM for civilization. Economies would crumble. Our way of life would regress. Nothing short of disaster.
Of course, as has often been a trait of humanity, we rose to the occasion and, true to form, Peak Whale Oil was not the disaster so many thought it would be. Why? The biggest reason, of course, was the ingenuity of American business to not just lie down and die, but to innovate. They found that the black liquid bubbling up from the ground could be tapped as a brand new energy source, and they built out the huge infrastructure that was needed to make it happen.
The same thing will happen again. Nobody is going to just lie down as our world falls apart. If for no other reason than there's a (huge) buck to be made in preventing that.
Don't under estimate the powers of greed and self-preservation.
Nonsense. You're confusing the price of crude oil and the price of gasoline in your argument.
;)
Artificially reducing refinery capacity does reduce gasoline supply - which definitely increases the price of gasoline. BUT it also reduces the demand for crude oil - which lowers its price!
And yet, the price of crude oil not only has gone up, but it has gone up faster than gasoline prices this year (http://www.wtrg.com/daily/oilandgasspot.html). I suspect you might have to further refine your crude conspiracy theory.
I think we should be working toward decentralized power. Certain technologies like ultracapacitors seem to hold a lot of promise with small-scale energy storage. As the cost of solar comes down and the efficiency rises, or even as hydrogen becomes available, decentralized power may start to make a lot of sense.
With regard to transportation energy (sort of off topic for your post, but there it is...), ride a bike! You'll be in good health, save money, and slow down enough to appreciate things you never even notice in a car!
life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think
Why not make a meaningful comparison, like $ subsidy per watt?
Both nuclear and solar need subsidies at present because coal is dirt cheap. Nuclear has also almost certainly received more investment and subsidies than solar.
The big difference though is that nuclear actually makes up a large part of the world's power production, and is actually a realistic way to meet the world's growing power demands. Barring a miracle world-changing invention solar just can't.
If you want your tax dollars (in subsidies) to fight climate change then you'll get much better bang for your buck with nuclear.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
The current problem with rapidly escalating oil prices is not related to US refinery capacity. If the bottleneck was at the refinery level, crude would be cheap and gasoline would be expensive. In fact, both are expensive.
A statement like "more oil is currently known to exist than any other time in human history" is absurd, and I wonder how you arrived at it. We don't know how much oil exists, partly because some of it is - as you say - "undiscovered", ie we think it might be out there but we don't know for sure - but mostly because OPEC lie about the size of their remaining reserves. Data quality in the oil industry is poor to non-existant. We don't even have accurate figures for how much we pump out of the ground each day, let alone how much we have left.
You are confused about the pricing of sour crudes. Yes, they are cheaper, but not significantly so. The spot price of Mexican Maya on the 16th was $79, only about $10-$12 less than the price of the high quality stuff. Given that oil used to cost $10-$12 the fact that sour has risen to slightly less than sweet is really of no consequence.
You say there's no factual information to indicate that we're at peak. But world production has been flat since the summer of 2004, despite progressively increasing prices (due to increased demand from Asia) providing every incentive to pump more. This behavior has not been seen before and strongly suggests that world production capacity is maxed out - there are huge wins to be had by any company or country that can significantly boost production, but doing an analysis of an oil major like ExxonMobil, will show that their existing fields decline as fast as they can replace them. To me this is a pretty good sign that we're at peak - inability to raise production despite huge demand.
The whole "it's an oil industry conspiracy" won't wash, sorry. This isn't like the computer industry where one or two companies can dominate the landscape - oil is a commodity, and the price is not set by the oil companies but by supply and demand. It's the simplest market you can get. Anybody who is sitting on top of a giant oil field right now would be an idiot to leave it for tomorrow, because there's no guarantee we'll want that oil tomorrow - maybe there's a recession and oil demand is reduced. Maybe we discover better ways to power our cars.
Right now there's a lead-in time of at least 5 years from discovering a field to first commercial oil, sometimes longer. Even if you start today, there is risk. If you leave it longer, the risk gets even bigger. At least for private oil companies, there are huge financial incentives to boost production and thus get a leg up over your competitors in stock price and profits. To claim that the entire industry is in a cartel to deliberately hold back production is to reveal your lack of knowledge around discovery trends, skills shortages and the impact on depletion rates of modern production techniques like horizontal wells/waterflooding.
And if we actually had to pay triple for our power we all, personally, would suddenly find ways to use less (or reallocate our spending) and companies would put more money into find better alternatives.
I'm all for jacking up the price and removing subsidies.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
fyi, nobody is investing in new oil refineries, because noone in their right mind would invest $$$ when they won't get a return on capitol. The market has spoken - the market says there isn't money to be made from more refineries. That's probably because you'd have to run it for 10 years to break-even, and in 10 years time, our refining capacity may outstrip supply. Either that, or there's a massive organised world-wide conspiricy, to keep gold cookies out away from intelligent negative people.
Long story short, there is actually zero factual information to suggest we are anywhere near peak
Ignore the factual information. There's *lots* of oil. Jedi waves hand.
If the oil companies are conspiring to do anything, it's that they want to sell you *more* oil and *now*. That's because it's good for their bottom line. So go to the gas station and fill up, dump in the river and fill up again! Don't worry about future scarcity! We want your money NOW! and if we make money it's good for the economy, so it _must_ be good for you too!
There's an apt saying: "Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity". As I see it, the oil companies aren't capable of the type of conspiricy you suggest. It's too easy to shine light on their FUD. For example, the chamber of echos that exxon has created to suggest that there's *lots* of scientists who don't believe in the human impact on climate change. Some are fooled, anyone who cares to look it not.
And on the bright side - if you're right - and the oil companies are delibertly trying *not* to sell more oil (falls down laughing), then they're doing humanity a service on so many different levels:
Energy prices have been too low for too long. If an energy crunch happens, it will mean severe economic adjustment (and hardship) that could have been mitigated by a more frugle policy to energy usage. Such policies could help the economy slowly make the necessary structural changes. Such policies fly can only exist when the future becomes more important than satisfying immediate wants. I'm not holding my breath - too many people with a sense of entitlement - that they should have what they want, and have it now. Humanities current flirtation with greed has nothing to do with malice, and everything to do with stupidty.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Most nuclear plants haven't failed; they've been running just fine... France is the obvious example, n'est-ce pas?