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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.'"
1.21 gigawatts? 1.21 gigawatts? Great Scott!
The solution to this problem must be out on the internet somewhere... if only I had a website I could use to try to find it...
Given how much money it costs to keep Google's kit running, it's in their interests to look for cheaper energy. It's an investment they hope will increase future profitability.
Has Bill Gates or Steve Jobs made any similar pledges?
Spent fuel -> breeder reactor -> fissionable fuel, and it's already cheaper than coal.
Oh wait, we don't like that kind of renewable resource...
It's going to be some sort of "matrix" where google plugs us all in and harvests renewable energy AND our personal info.
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...
The part I don't understand is how Google plans on tracking how consumers utilize this electricity, so they can in turn display targeted advertising through AdSense and Gmail. Surely I'm missing something.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
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?
"Clean" coal is still extremly dirty, EVEN if you ignore the carbon issue. For instance, Clinton had passed a law that was going to force ALL of America's coal plants to cut way back on mercury emissoins. W. killed that almost right away when he took over. The reason is that it was estimated to jump electric prices up by 25%. Bear in mind that Clinton's clean up would not have stopped the mercury, just cut it in half. Right now, even in America, we do not do a good job of cleaning up our emissions, BECAUSE of the costs. And countries like China simply skip it all togehter, even though they have billions in the bank and are giving it to other countries to obtain their resources.
Best thing that America can do is get off coal (and natural gas is not the way to go, but better than coal). Nukes would help.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
$29 Billon at the last count. It has the same budget as the entire WHO and dwarfs the amount the US government spends on aid.
Gee, building a maglev train in the richest part of the world's richest country to carry the world's richest, fattest taxpayers, wouldn't THAT be a gift to humanity?
Google invested heavily in a company called NanoSolar back on 2002. Since then, Google, along with some of the top investors, have given Nanosolar millions and millions of dollars to produce printable roll-out solar cells that uses a conductive foil instead of silicon, making the cells much cheaper and easier to make. For information on Nanosolar's history, you can go here.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
No disrespect to Google, and I'm glad they're making the investment, but they (and a lot of the commenters here) seem to think all it requires is waving their Magic Googlewand(beta) and we'll have energy cheaper than coal(!! Coal is pretty freaking cheap).
If it were easy, it'd have been done already. For Google to claim that they think it can be done in "years, not decades" sounds like a good bit of hubris. If they don't have something already on the horizon, then we're stepping in the range of arrogant stupidity.
All the credit to Google for stepping up to the plate and trying to get something done, but the way the whole thing is worded, there's this undercurrent of assumption that nobody has tried to make these things work before. All inventors think about cheap energy! It's like Google slapped their head one day and said, "Good God! Why didn't anyone think of creating alternate energy cheaper than coal before?? We're geniuses!!"
I hope something comes of it, but I'm not holding my breath.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I work for a major public power company and have worked on some renewables projects in departments concerned with supplying retail load (e.g. you, your aunt, Google, etc.) What so much of this debate forgets -- either deliberatley or inadvertently -- is that electricity can't be stored in any useful quantity. It's unique among commodities.
Thus it follows that the main problem with 99% of renewable energy is that it is not dispatchable. When you're working for the power company and suddenly load spikes, you need to be able to call on a resource immediately. We have dozens of internal procedures (and a load of regulation) that dictate how much "ready to go" energy we must have available at any point.
As a utility I can't count of a solar plant to be there as a reserve -- even in the Southwestern U.S. -- nor wind. (Geothermal is a notable exception -- it's as reliable as coal or nuke -- but is only available in specific locations.) Sure, if I could store the energy produced by a wind farm until I needed it, great, but that's not a possibility.
I doubt that Google (or any business) will be willing to accept the operating risk of not having some form of dispatchable energy ready at hand. So they've got two choices:
Utilities, for the most part, regard renewable energy projects as really expensive press release opportunities. Utilities are required to be reliable and, for the most part, are run by men and women who take pride in the fact that when you, Joe Customer, turn on your kid's night light, it comes on. Until someone figures out how to store energy from a wind or solar farm, the energy driving that night light is going to be baseloaded on either fossil or nuclear fuel.
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.
OK - fine. How many parts per million of uranium is there in sea water, eh? Now, take the number of parts of Uranium you will need to run a reactor. Multiple those two numbers, and you will get the volume of water you will need to boil off to get the uranium you need for ONE reactor.
About 3 parts per billion
That's the first I've ever heard about anybody being crazy enough to try to boil off the water to extract the uranium.
http://jolisfukyu.tokai-sc.jaea.go.jp/fukyu/mirai-en/4_5.html
If 2g-U/kg-adsorbent is submerged for 60 days at a time and used 6 times, the uranium cost is calculated to be 88,000 yen/kg-U, including the cost of adsorbent production, uranium collection, and uranium purification. When 6g-U/kg-adsorbent and 20 repetitions or more becomes possible, the uranium cost reduces to 15,000 yen. This price level is equivalent to that of the highest cost of the minable uranium. The lowest cost attainable now is 25,000 yen with 4g-U/kg-adsorbent used in the sea area of Okinawa, with 18 repetitionuses. In this case, the initial investment to collect the uranium from seawater is 107.7 billion yen, which is 1/3 of the construction cost of a one million-kilowatt class nuclear power plant
So, of the order of $1bn to setup and then around 250$/kg to extract using current technology to extract enough uranium to run 6 nuclear power stations.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
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
Have you heard it burn rubber when the stoplight goes green? Electric motors like the Prius uses are amazing at producing off-the-line torque. Combine that with its low weight, and you find that the Prius actually out-accelerates most cars on the road.
As an environmental move, whether hybrid drivetrains represent a net win is a little ambiguous (until we get plug-in hybrids). But for performance, they have a lot of pretty exciting advantages.
I was on a University team which built a hybrid formula-style racecar. That thing blew the pants off of Ferraris. In fact, it was originally entered for the general Formula SAE event, which then outlawed hybrids as having an unfair advantage. (So we started another competition just for hybrid vehicles.)
Want to see what electric motors can do? Check out the Tesla Roadster. And it only uses an AC induction motor (hence "Tesla")!!
(The fact that it "only" uses an induction motor is important because induction motors, though cheap and durable, are not even the money-no-object "best" option: That would be a permanent magnet synchronous DC motor.)
The downside to electric drivetrains is that they have more components, and electric motors are heavy, so their more impressive torque needs to make up for the increased weight. But the fact is that, currently, hybrids do exactly that, and, as motors get lighter, the advantages will only get more and more pronounced.
Have you heard the quiet, confident, high-tech sound of a really powerful electric motor spooling up? It's truly a beautiful sound.