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29 November 2007 - Google has said it will invest hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable energy project as part of a new initiative to produce electricity from renewable energy sources rather than coal.
According to Larry Page one of Google's co-founders, "Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity [enough to power San Francisco] that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades."
If Google achieved this, he said, the world would have the option of significantly reducing the greenhouse gases created by burning coal, a fuel used for 40 per cent of electricity supply at present.
The company said it expected to spend tens of millions of dollars in 2008 on research and development and related investments. It also anticipated investing hundreds of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects that generated positive returns.
During a conference call with reporters the Google founders were asked if they were straying from their core mission. Sergey Brin, Google's other co-founder responded by saying energy was already critical to Google's operations, referring to the energy-hungry data centres built by the company.
Google said it expected a pay-off of hundred of millions of dollars in the near term, through the realization of energy savings and the licensing of the technologies developed.
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