Google Fails at Renewables, Even with Taxpayer Guarantees

Now Weihl has left Google, saying only, "It's time to move on and find something new." But that is not before the company poured more than $850 million into renewable energy ventures. That included a $168 million investment in BrightSource Energy's first large-scale solar project - the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System - which is under construction in California's Mojave Desert.

by Paul Chesser, nlpc.org
Google announced a project in which it would pursue a so-far elusive goal - to produce "Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal" ("RE But last week the company announced it will end RE "We're in the process of shutting a number of products which haven't had the impact we'd hoped for," wrote Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Operations, on the company's blog.
Under RE "It is even odds, more or less," said Weihl, a Time magazine "hero of the environment," at the time. "In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there."
Now Weihl has left Google, saying only, "It's time to move on and find something new." But that is not before the company poured more than $850 million into renewable energy ventures. That included a $168 million investment in BrightSource Energy's first large-scale solar project - the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System - which is under construction in California's Mojave Desert.

Read the rest of the article here.