While America’s youth are working hard towards having 1 million youth pledge to Power Vote, Google has announced its own PowerVote pledge with its Clean Energy 2030 Proposal. The Internet giant has continued to lead beyond its main business by pledging to make Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal, joining General Electric in figuring out how to get America’s national grid to be “smart,” and even becoming a leader by example with a large solar power installation at their headquarters. Now, Google has announced a proposal that could wean America off of most fossil fuels by 2030, a plan in line with what T. Boone Pickens has called for with his Pickens Plan and the call by Al Gore to make all electricity consumed in America renewable by 2018.
Google’s proposal calls for a 100% reduction in coal and oil consumption in America by installing 300 GW of onshore wind energy, 80GW of offshore wind energy, 170GW of solar photovoltaic, 80GW of concentrated solar power, 15GW of conventional geothermal, and 65GW of enhanced geothermal. It also calls for an increase in sales of plug-in and hybrid vehicles to 90% of all sales by 2030 (reaching 42% of the U.S. vehicle fleet in 2030), increasing conventional vehicle fuel efficiency to 45mgp by 2030, an acceleration of the vehicle fleet turnover from 19 to 13 years (increasing sales by 31%), and building some 32,000 kilometers of new transmission lines.
The bill: $4.4 trillion. If we begin in 2010, this means an annual investment of $220 billion by the private sector and the government, with the majority of it coming from the private sector. It will also mean savings of $1 trillion by 2030 due to the lower price of renewables compared to oil, as well as other factors. These savings exclude the potential of energy efficiency, which is not aggressively considered in Google’s plan. According to estimates, America can cut its energy use by up to 30% by simply having smarter building codes, using more efficient appliances, and increasing fuel efficiency.
Google’s plan also calls for government action. Specifically, it wants a National Renewable Portfolio Standard, a price on carbon dioxide, fixed long-term tax credits and incentives (such as a feed-in tariff), funding for R&D and a smarter national grid that can cope with intermittence, a National Energy Efficiency Standard for appliances, buildings, vehicles, national decoupling of utility profits from sales, and investment in infrastructure for the massive deployment of plug-ins. The plan also acknowledges that to accomplish these goals, we will need a well-trained workforce to take on the new Green Jobs that will be created with increased manufacturing capacity, installations, and renovations.
According to the plan, this is clearly achievable given the increasing private interest in renewable energy and the economic benefits such a goal would bring. One of the benefits is a dramatic drop in carbon dioxide emissions: 95%. The only sources of emissions would be agriculture, some land-use, and natural gas used in vehicles, as Pickens proposes. What’s better, this plan would be a strong response to the current financial crisis and would ensure that Washington, D.C. (or taxpayers) doesn’t have to bail out Wall Street again. It will also reverse the trend of job losses and create millions of new, Green Jobs, lifting people out of poverty and putting the middle class once again on a track of improving quality of life.
While Google’s plan frames exactly what we need to do and affirms that the private sector will play the biggest role with its significant investments over the next 20 years, it fails to call for other necessary strategies to reducing fossil fuel use. Specifically, it does not mention the immense role public transportation can play, especially in urban areas, where most cars can be found today. It seems to skim over the fact that urban sprawl is one of the big promoters of inefficiency and fossil fuel use. It also seems to leave out the debate over biofuels, whether sustainable or not, perhaps assuming that they will play no role in the future. Finally, it doesn’t leave a role for tidal and ocean energy, as well as solar thermal energy for homes, which are currently gaining increased interest in the United States.
Regardless of these shortcomings, Clean Energy 2030 is bold, visionary, and necessary. With this plan, Google has also PowerVoted for clean energy, green jobs, and a more sustainable and just future.
Posted in Government, News and Media, United States
