Whether or not you think they can actually pull it off, sometimes you just have to love Google. We’re now full-swing into the election cycle and one of the first things on every candidates lips is “renewable energy”. When pressed for more specifics on the issue, most quickly rattle off either ‘wind’ or ’solar’ and then start into whatever particular technology for gasoline replacement they’re supporting (if they’re even supporting one). Specifics are lacking to say the least, and have been for a long time in this country. So in steps Google.

Google has set up an initiative with a stated goal of producing one gigawatt of renewable energy that is cheaper than coal. They plan on pouring millions of dollars of research and development money into this over the next several years – and that’s the key – they think it can be done within years not decades.

They think it can be done and I absolutely agree – just look at some of the technology we have nowadays compared to what we had 50, 20, or even 10 years ago. Would anyone have thought the iPhone would have existed 10 years ago? I was still using a tape player and was in awe of my pager! Yet despite crazy advances in many fields, we’re still using the same basic technology to power automobiles that we were 100 years ago. We were using coal for power well over 100 years ago – and today just in the United States alone we’re still using about 1 billion tons of it a year almost all of which is going towards generating electricity.

You think we don’t have the brainpower to come up with better solutions than these in 100 years? Please. It’s all political. That’s exactly why someone with a high enough profile – like Google – needs to step up and make this happen. If you think they aren’t serious about this, just look who wrote the post on their blog this morning – Larry Page, co-founder.