Emailing "Google's Weihl Named Hero of the Environment"
It's not every day that someone from the tech industry gets recognized for greentech contributions publicly, let alone a grand-sounding prize such as "
Hero of the Environment." Google's green energy czar, Bill Weihl, is not your every day greentech guy though. He's combined his academic background with a passion for environmental causes to revolutionize Google's energy consumption. How else could you characterize Google's 50% cut in energy use, or its achievement of carbon-neutral status, in spite of its massive data centers?
Not content with these achievements, Google has set its sights even higher:
But Google is an enterprise incapable of thinking small. The real goal of its green program is to help clean energy to break out of its tiny niche, just as Google went from start-up to Silicon Valley superstar in a few short years. While many environmentalists want to focus on raising the price of fossil fuels through a carbon cap, Weihl thinks the real work needs to be done in the lab, searching for the breakthroughs that will enable solar and other renewables to beat coal in the marketplace. To that end, Google is spreading its spare millions to startups like eSolar and BrightSource Energy, as well as sponsoring its own research. Right now Weihl's engineers are focusing on solar thermal power -- which uses the heat of the sun to generate electricity by boiling water to turn a turbine -- and developing new mirrors that could cut the cost of such plants by a quarter or more.
So hats off to Weihl and his team at Google for their accomplishments, and for bringing important cleantech issues such as data center energy use and renewables into the public debate. Nice job!