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Lessons Learned From Google's Green Energy Bust
the_newsbeagle writes In 2007, Google boldly declared a new initiative to invent a green energy technology that produced cheaper electricity than coal-fired power plants. Sure, energy researchers had been hammering at this task for decades, but Google hoped to figure it out in a few years. They didn't. Instead, Google admitted defeat and shut down the project in 2011. In a admirable twist, however, two of the project's engineers then dedicated themselves to learning from the project's failure. What did it mean that one of the world's most ambitious and capable innovation companies couldn't invent a cheap renewable energy tech?
I think this speaks a lot about how companies and the population are increasingly thinking in rather short terms and how little respect the modern tech elite have for those who came before them. There seems to be this attitude that difficult problems are only unsolved because the 'wrong' people have looked at it and flush with arrogance for solving comparatively simple internet related ones they believe that they are smarter and thus will quickly tackle what those 'researchers' and 'old fogies' could not.
And when gratification is not instant, they move on.
I also see this, on a smaller but more insidious scale, in the almost pathological desire to not learn from the past developers have been fetishizing. Too often learning roots or old technologies 'taints' a person with 'old' ideas rather than teaching them lessons others have already learned so that they can move on from there. So many 'new' technologies that when the developers are asked 'ok, this is great, but how do you plan to address the issues that were encountered last time?' they just look at you blankly and claim this is new and innovative, or that you just don't understand.
Ok, got a bit off topic there ^_^
I have seen - predominantly on Slashdot, obviously, but also elsewhere, a sort of naive technocrats (who are often also libertarians) believing that as soon as some technology is needed, the invisible hand of the market magically creates this technology so one only has to sit and wait for this magic solution to appear out of thin air. The more down-to-earth kind of these people even tried to explain this magic by telling that this process happens by throwing enough money at a problem.
Unfortunately - and TFA is a picture book example of this - reality doesn't work that way. Breakthroughs don't happen by magic, they happen by meticulous research and a shitload of small steps. Solutions don't suddenly appear just when they are needed, a long lead time of research is required. And sometimes this new technology never comes up at all.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The big news to me isn't that they weren't able to invent the tech, but their estimate that even if their most optimistic scenario had come true w.r.t. clean energy tech that it still wouldn't be enough to avoid the "really bad" scenario w.r.t. climate change (if you trust Hansen's models).
If you don't like the choices previous generations made, you first should figure out WHY they made those choices before deciding they were wrong.
And you can learn a lot in the process of finding this out. Sometimes I wonder why nobody has tried X, I look it up and 9 times out of 10 there are good reasons, and I learn what they are instead of wasting time. Then there's the 1 time out of 10, like when I asked why nobody invented a hydraulic anti-roll system for cars that can also control squat and dive, years before FRICS was used in F1 (originally I was thinking it could get around the problem of sway bars getting bent in offroad racing).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You can't "invent" cheaper tech--it only gets cheaper if you invest in mass-producing it. They gave up 3 years ago, and since then market forces have actually achieved price parity for renewables in a lot of the world. It wasn't any new "magic bullet" research that did it, but incremental improvements driven by economies of scale. Yes, government played a big role, but primarily as a driver of demand and investor in manufacturing.
The climate does not have time to wait for a new technology to be developed and go through the whole sequence of commercialization and commoditization. The solar panels, wind turbines and batteries we already have can do the job--and the more we build, the cheaper they get.. This is one place I wish market purists would get on board--put a price on carbon, and solutions will come out of the woodwork and plummet in price.
What did it mean that one of the world's most ambitious and capable innovation companies couldn't invent a cheap renewable energy tech?
Umm, nothing. Google has no special expertise in energy tech. This is WAY outside their core businesses where they have a proven competence. The notion that they would to solve the economic problem of renewable energy where everyone else had (so far) failed is somewhere between well intentioned altruism and pure undiluted hubris. (not sure where on that scale though) The only thing Google has is smart people and a huge bank account. Those are nice assets to work with but just because you can throw smart people and money at a problem doesn't mean a solution will magically appear in a timely manner. Research is unpredictable and requires long term dedication. And even if you do succeed in coming up with a nifty new technology it doesn't automatically mean that the economics of it will be favorable. I'm not saying Google shouldn't try - I'm glad to see them working on and/or bankrolling research such problems. My point is that Google shouldn't be expected to be more likely to solve the problem than any number of other companies/organizations that have worked on these problems.