Google Inc has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, the latest target of Chief Executive Larry Page’s moves to focus the Internet giant on fewer efforts.
[…]
Google began making investments and doing research into technology to drive down the price of renewable energy in 2007, with a particular focus on solar power technology.
In 2009, the company’s so-called Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl, told Reuters that he expected to demonstrate within a few years working technology that could produce renewable energy at a cheaper price than coal.
“It is even odds, more or less,” Weihl said at the time. “In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there.”
A Google spokesman said that Weihl had left Google earlier this month.
Should have read Understanding E=mc2
Wishing something to come true (cheap green energy) does not make it so.
That’s the basic flaw with the green movement, everyone prancing through the daisies on the back of a unicorn in a healthy chorus of “Age of Aquarius” If we just think renewable thoughts the cosmos will allign and all will be well. Puleeze!
Why is it so easy for us uneducated steerage class passengers to figure this out while our so-called betters keep chasing their tails?
@ Eskimo
Three reasons. Steerage class is loud, brainwashed and have a lot of votes.
Our politicians are weenies, brainwashed and lack common sense.
The Liberal Arts types also believe in perpetual motion machines.
It must be very disappointing to the Google billionaires. I wonder if they’ve ever heard of upsidasium?
@ Eskimo
Mistake…..Steerage class, the good guys. Is there a level below steerage class ?
peterj,
Yes…H2O.
LOL LOL LOL
Math is hard, eh?!
Google
– leftist leaning California company
– employer of the largest number of smart dumb people in the USA
– ref: Guinness Book Of World Records
They fail to understand the laws of physics. More importantly, they fail to understand that there is an army of government employees, labor unions and environmental lawyers who will work to squelch anything, including the status quo. Their jobs are at stake.
Think of all the coal miners who will starve if you market this powerful new self-recharging battery that can replace a nuclear plant.
Pogo was right. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Thermodynamics is a tough nut to crack. Throughout history the very best minds in physics, including Newton, Maxwell, Planck, Einstein, and Feynman, have taken it on, creating progress but also frustration.
Anyone who thinks that because they’re really clever programmers that they’re equipped to solve the world’s energy problems has become untethered from reality.
too funny, i love it.
yes 6 ounces of matter can run Sanfrancisco for 5 years, kinda hard to beat that.
the Law of Physics and Gravity, if u can’t beat them join them, to funny.
Scientific reality meets Exuberant stupidity.
Reality always, in the end, wins.
I guess the problem with many people achieving a university education, is that if one has a university degree for example, in political science, one may assume that he is intelligent enough to speak knowledgeably on scientific matters after reading pseudo-scientific papers/articles/books. The logic here is that if the person didn’t have the intellectual gifts or discipline to major in the “sciences” in the first place, then it would follow that he may not be able to see scientifically fallacious arguments made by the aformetioned reading material, because he has no background in the subject. Furthemore, many of these pseudo-scientific articles are usually written by authors with pretentious-sounding nomenclatures like “Dr. David Suzuki”, which in turn impresses the non-scientific reader enough to assume that the author is an expert in the matter of Global Warming (TM) instead of the genetics of the fruit-fly.
Thank you for that article,I’ve bookmarked it and will refer to it whenever I encounter another “sustainable renewable energy” proponent.
Good comment,favill.
Well, renewable energy can be cheaper than fossil fuels, or nuclear, in some circumstances.
It just doesn’t scale well. Working in the oil patch, I have seen dozens and dozens of wellheads with instrumentation and telemetry powered by a solar panel on a pole, with a battery bank in a cabinet at the base of the pole. In that circumstance, solar costs less than building X km of pole line to bring in in grid power to the site.
The same could be true for residential power at a remote site.
Also note, that rigorously speaking, hydroelectric is in fact renewable energy, even though the greentard party line states the contrary, and hydro can be very cheap.
I’ve found the principles outlined in that paper to be a good test for the eco-zealotry of the one with whom one is having a conversation. Most reasonable individuals hear it, think about it, and either nod knowingly, or are intrigued enough to want to read the article for themselves. The more ecolunacy present, the more objection, or outright denial of the basic principles involved with flights into fancy for vague, undefined ways of cheating the basic science. A common element of religion is belief in the miraculous. Eco-zealotry plainly places itself in that camp.
Google’s new chief Larry Page does some “renewable energy” house cleaning – will Al Gore also go in the dustbin?? He sits on the board, does he not?
Had Goggle approached the “cheaper than coal” project with humility, saying “It’s an outside chance but it’s worth a try, and if we fail others might learn from it and ultimately succeed” then I would be sympathetic.
But to lay even odds on such a difficult target reeks of hubris.
“Understanding E = mc2” ….Great article!!!
Heck………..even I could comprehend it!
The Google folks, just like any other pinkos on the planet, were doing this as a holier-than-thou feel-good exercise. Google = left + wealthy, and that is a *guaranteed* predictor of hypocrisy.
So while they make heaps of money using the capitalist system and consume vast quantities of energy for their server farms, they pretend to be left-leaning green lovers. Do you think Page flies commercial or on a private jet? And what about that new massive gas guzzling boat he recently bought?
In general, much as I admire what Silicon Valley has produced, it also probably has the highest concentration of lefty hypocrites on the planet. That’s why people like Gore love the place, where he can be among fellow hypocrites.
Silicon Valley never used to be like that, but like so much of what once made America great, it has been crippled by stupid leftist ideas.
I think I can, I think I can, I think I can….awwww crap…..
gordinkneehill “Well, renewable energy can be cheaper than fossil fuels, or nuclear, in some circumstances.”
Indeed so, it is why farms still put up windmills to do things like pump water into holding tanks. But not to power the TV for watching “Farm Report” or “Dexter.”
too funny, i love it.
yes 6 ounces of matter can run Sanfrancisco for 5 years, kinda hard to beat that.
Posted by: doug at November 23, 2011 12:05 PM
Hell, what’s so funny about that. I mean, 4 ounces of grey matter have been running Ontario for 8 years…
Actually it isn’t “E=Mc2” that they are violating, it’s a much older law called the “Second Law of Thermodynamics”. These people aren’t even in the 20th Century yet.
Post Solyndra, they figured they couldn’t get a big subsidy cheque from the US Government.
The economics always look a lot harder when your own cash is on the line.
Nuclear, more specifically thorium, seems to be the next logical step in energy production. At least until we can get our butts into gear and develop some kind of cheap high capacity storage.
Although by the time that happens, some kind of unforeseeable advancement will probably occur and nullify any predictions.