Google’s Needham Shows It’s Easy Being Green
Most people know that the future of energy doesn’t lie in oil or coal, but in green technology. The planet’s reserves of oil and coal will eventually run out, leaving humans with only renewable resources, like sun and wind, to draw energy from.
Rick Needham, director of energy and sustainability at Google, gave a presentation at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco arguing that not only does the future of energy lie in green, but this future is cheaper as well.
“While fossil-based prices are on a cost curve that goes up, renewable prices are on this march downward,” said Needham.
Why are renewable energy prices going down? Because renewable energy is simply that – renewable. Green energy comes from efficient turbines and solar panels to harvest the power of wind and the sun, two things that will never disappear. Fossil fuels are much harder to get to. Consider hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) for example. While fracking has lowered the cost of gas in some areas, but the overall pricing trends point to renewable energy being more affordable.
Needham touched on several points that strengthened the case for green energy during his presentation.
Last year in the U.S., wind capacity growth outpaced coal by two times. Even the amount of time wind turbines are active has increased to 50 percent due to better site selection and efficiency. Before now, wind farms were only active 30 percent of the time. Needham explained that wind farms in the Midwest are able to produce power for only five cents a kilowatt-hour.
Wind power isn’t the only green energy source that’s becoming cheaper and more efficient. Over the last five years, solar panels have fallen in price by 80 percent, and the cost of energy has dropped by 28 percent.
Needham isn’t just saying all of this. He and Google are leading the charge towards green energy by example. Google has purchased 260 MW of wind power, and some of these contracts will give the company stable prices for almost 20 years. Google also invested a billion dollars into alternate power projects that will generate more power than the Internet giant used in all of 2011.
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