Google’s Investment in Clean Energy is an Excellent Choice, Data Reveals
Google isn’t investing billions of dollars in green energy to make people happy but it’s because there exists data to prove that it affects their bottom line positively.
Rick Needham, director of energy and sustainability at Google, while delivering a presentation at the CleanTech Forum explains why, in saying, “While fossil-based prices are on a cost curve that goes up, renewable prices are on this march downward.”
And this trend favoring renewables persists even if the method of ‘fracking’ has reduced gas costs in several regions.
It’s not surprising that the reason for this is because of energy source itself, which is in abundance and seemingly everywhere unlike fossil-based resources.
While the clean energy industry just has to focus on creating mass technologies to capture these resources, the fossil fuel industry has solve an ever increasing problem of using technology to extract resources that are harder to reach. This is why fossil fuel prices are volatile while clean energy prices are stable.
Other reasons why Google considers this to be a good investment are:
#1: Almost 49% of the capacity commissioned by the US in 2012 was renewable and almost 40% came from wind which outperformed coal by producing twice as much.
#2: Not only has the levelized cost of energy dropped by 28% but the cost of producing solar panels have also dropped heavily by 80%.
#3: With Google procuring almost 260 MW of power through wind contracts, the company will enjoy a steady source of energy at stable prices for almost another 20 years.
#4: Google has already invested $1 billion in alternative power projects which can generate at least 2 GW of power every year or twice as much power that Google used in 2011.