This is telling. From this Reuters article, news that Google has decided that seven projects just don’t pencil out as planned, and alternate energy is one that doesn’t. So much for the “cheaper than coal” meme they were pushing. Not only that, the green wizard who planned this all is out the door.
“Google said on Tuesday that it was pulling the plug on seven projects, including Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal…” […]“To recap, we’re in the process of shutting down a number of products which haven’t had the impact we’d hoped for…” wrote Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Holzle […]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. […]A Google spokesman said that Weihl had left Google earlier this month.
Here’s the Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal page at Google. And here’s a video on one of the plans, looks like pie in the sky when you watch it.
The video description on YouTube says:
Google’s heliostat team re-thought the entire heliostat architecture in order to reduce the cost of concentrating solar thermal power. This led to new approaches and different ways to tackle problems. This video covers the 3 guiding principles of the research, and how the team took a different approach to reducing costs
h/t to Poptech
Now if they can get rid of those 23 cretins that are trying to skew climategate searches and global warming to suit the AGW meme that would be a big improvement….
Let the awakening commence! New technologies in general do not perform as advertised. This is based on the fact that not all important variables are identified and under control.
I for one am glad that Google was not able to violate the Laws of Nature and Physics (that would be EVIL!!))
Time to start facing the simple facts Greenies that trying to convert wind, bio mass or solar in to energy is never going to be cheaper then coal.
Your search – “renewable energy” – did not match any documents.
Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Darn, I was hoping Al Gore got kicked off their board.
These folks like big words. Not that it’s a bad thing. But once all of Nevada is covered in heliostats, there won’t be any more room for gamblers, and Lost Wages will still have to turn its lights off at night. Not hard to see why Google noticed the bottom line.
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Dang…
They never did solve the key issue of generating thermal energy at night. Now if they could have cracked that, they would have been ok.
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Our pals on the left are still constrained by the universal axiom money talks and BS walks… at least when it comes to THEIR money.
Profiting off of so called ’emergent technology’ is quite easy.
Someone with a reputation for savvy investing invests. The lemmings follow suit and invest driving up the stock price. Then the original investor quietly unloads at the higher price.
As google is generally recognized as a ‘savvy’ company they could invest in a synthetic doggy doo manufacturer and the stock would rise. If they could get Martha Stewart to say something nice about synthetic doggy doo then they would really make money.
Google manipulates searches for political & advertising purposes, I have observed this myself. They are EVIL. Google is ALL ABOUT MANIPULATION and CONTROL.
http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/dawn-stover/the-myth-of-renewable-energy
A critical anaysis of so-called renewables.
“But meeting the world’s total energy demands in 2030 with renewable energy alone would take an estimated 3.8 million wind turbines (each with twice the capacity of today’s largest machines), 720,000 wave devices, 5,350 geothermal plants, 900 hydroelectric plants, 490,000 tidal turbines, 1.7 billion rooftop photovoltaic systems, 40,000 solar photovoltaic plants, and 49,000 concentrated solar power systems. That’s a heckuva lot of neodymium.”
RE<C is easy.
It is called large scale hydro. It powers the Pacific Northwest for about half the national average.
North America still has many gigawatts of capacity – mostly in Canada and Alaska. The problem is that environmental regulations make it nearly impossible to build large dams and very expensive to build transmission lines.
O/T – “Unprecedented Artic ice loss! Worst in 1450 years!” Published by Nature magazine – http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/full/nature10581.html
Everyone of these technologies requires 100% back up by something that can produce electricity on demand rather than intermittently. These green technologies basically add meaningless cost to each watt.
Emerging patterns…
First Wind wants to pull Bowers Mountain wind project — for now
http://bangordailynews.com/2011/11/16/news/penobscot/first-wind-wants-to-pull-bowers-mountain-wind-project-for-now/?ref=latest
Wind power foes travel to Augusta
http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/wind-powerfoes-travelto-augusta_2011-11-17.html
Highland Wind, led by former Gov. Angus King and former Maine Public Broadcasting Corp. president Rob Gardiner, withdrew an application to the state this spring to erect 39 turbines in Highland. But the two said they plan to revise it and re-submit it later.
Smart meter issues…..
http://www.pressherald.com/news/electronics-on-the-fritz_-could-be-smart-meters_2011-11-19.html
If you read the whole article you would know that Google is in a cost cutting mode and focusing more on what it does best. The work on heliostats and solar energy is being done by many other researchers in several countries. Experimentation in renewables WILL ultimately lead to the energy resources of the future. And THAT is a good thing. Open your eyes!
I’m guessing someone in high places over there finally got around to doing a back-of-the-envelope, best-possible-outcome, economic evaluation of those technologies and suffered a “holy s–t!” moment. I’ll also bet they had to drag The Goracle out of the boardroom red-faced, kicking and screaming when the vote came up.
Google should have googled first, oh wait but they adjusted the algorithm. Caught in their own google.
So even Google has to submit to the Laws of Physics.
How refreshing.
oebele bruinsma says:
November 24, 2011 at 8:46 am
Let the awakening commence! New technologies in general do not perform as advertised. This is based on the fact that not all important variables are identified and under control.
__________________________
Yeah
From years in industry, I always figured it would cost at least twice as much and take three times as long as my original calculated estimate. It helped make my costing a lot closer to reality. (Thank goodness accounting never look asked for the input data)
JB says:
November 24, 2011 at 9:46 am
“Experimentation in renewables WILL ultimately lead to the energy resources of the future. And THAT is a good thing.”
Perfectly fine with me; as long as they don’t expect me to keep their installations afloat with constant injections of taxpayer money.
Showing results for Google
Search instead for Boondoggle
JB says:
November 24, 2011 at 9:46 am
If you read the whole article you would know that Google is in a cost cutting mode and focusing more on what it does best. The work on heliostats and solar energy is being done by many other researchers in several countries. Experimentation in renewables WILL ultimately lead to the energy resources of the future. And THAT is a good thing. Open your eyes!
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Renewables is all about scamming the tax payers and lemmings just like the banksters did during the Great Depression. “Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone has a written an explosive article on the exploits of Goldman Sachs.” http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/the_great_american_bubble_machine/print
The Coming Carbon Bubble: http://www.iatp.org/blog/2009/07/the-coming-carbon-bubble
Goldman Sachs and the 2008 Food Riots.
http://johannhari.com/2010/07/02/how-goldman-sachs-gambling-on-starving-the-worlds-poor-and-won
You want real renewable? Try Thorium Nuclear and with luck fusion.
Experimentation in renewables WILL ultimately lead to the energy resources of the future.
The Persian’s were experimenting with windmills sometime prior to 900 AD. One really has to admire people that believe a 1,000 year old technology that has been proven to be unreliable for 1,000 years believe that someday it will be reliable. It’s funny that the same people tend to want to ‘throw in the towel’ on nuclear power after only 60 years.
JB says:
November 24, 2011 at 9:46 am
If you read the whole article you would know that Google is in a cost cutting mode and focusing more on what it does best. The work on heliostats and solar energy is being done by many other researchers in several countries. Experimentation in renewables WILL ultimately lead to the energy resources of the future. And THAT is a good thing. Open your eyes!
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I don’t see how marginally reducing the upfront fixed cost on a solar installation fixtures WILL go very far towards making solar viable.