MAY 09

We all know that the Google boys are EcoGeeks. They've built themselves a 9 MW solar plant, worked to get plug-in hybrids on the streets and even sponsored a contest to create pedal-powered innovations.

But it is nonetheless good to hear Larry Page, one of the two founders of Google talking so passionately and optimistically about the future of our world. The interview, with Fortune Magazine, is a great read...full of hope and inspiration from one of the most influential entrepreneurs alive today.

I'm hugely more optimistic because now we have a conceptualization of the problems that makes some degree of sense to a fair number of people. Look at the things we worry about - poverty, global warming, people dying in accidents....I think our ability to achieve these things on a large scale for many people in the world is improving.

Page discusses Google's non-core (10% of company resources) interest in geothermal and solar thermal power. "How hard should it be to dig a really deep hole?" To be fair...it is pretty hard. But digging a really deep hole seems like a massively simpler process than the one we currently have set up to power America. Page seems honestly convinced that the world's problems will be solved. He puts emphasis on the power of small groups of smart people to make these changes...Ibut he also recognizes that the political, social and economic climate surrounding those small groups of smart people is pretty important too.

Comments (5)

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Clarification!
written by SolarDave, May 09, 2008

The Google solar array is actually a 1.6MW. Nothing to sneeze at, but not a 9MW plant either. Looking at your link, the original article was incorrect-- in the original's screenshot, you can see that the array is in fact a 1.6MW (1600 kW) plant that had produced 9,000 kWh of energy during a 24 hour period.

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Page's Optimistic Justified
written by Bob Carver, May 09, 2008

Although I agree with Page that optimism is justified, Google itself is one of the largest sources of pollution on the planet. Their servers use vast amounts of electricity generated by burning massive amounts of coal and other carbon sources. We have approached them offering a non-carbon alternative to source their electricity needs and they have flatly refused to switch. So, I do not think they are really serious about solving any real problems.

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written by MarkR, May 09, 2008

I'm not real optimistic until we get past the research stage of carbon capture and sequestering of CO2 already in the atmosphere. With the current food shortages thats starting to scare the you know what out of me. So I'm getting very negative on biofuels. But when we can pull the carbon out of the are in large volumes thats when I'll feel very optimistic. If we make it through that, we'll need to worry about not evolving into a "Gataca" type society once the DNA and Stem cell manipulation hits main stream.

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Name
written by hey, May 09, 2008

His name is Larry Page so of course he's a web guy. Where is Larry Panel to make solar as handy as Google.

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Be mindful of your metrics
written by Corban, May 15, 2008

Even if Google is one of the largest polluters by volume, this says nothing about its efficiency (and how EcoGeek would condemn them). If you'd prorate according to pollutants & energy PER unit of traffic, they could be very efficient.

How many smaller, inferior companies would it take in order to serve as many as they do? I'll bet they'd be pollutiong more. Centralization has some benefits, one of which is recycling of resources. One infrastructure can serve many servers, as opposed to many infrastructures serving only a few servers at a time.

Keep your eye on the ball at all times.

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