Google isn’t the only corporation to invest heavily in solar power, but its latest million dollar investment added to its previous healthy contributions will mark the company a leader in renewable energy promotion. The company announced just weeks ago that it would buy much of its energy from a wind farm in Iowa and now, along with a $150 million investment from solar panel maker, SunPower, Google will provide $100 million to contribute to lease financing for thousands of American homeowners to add solar panels to their roof tops and clean energy to their mix.
This isn’t an inaugural investment in clean energy for Google and the multi-national company isn’t just invested in solar financing for homeowners. Google put $280 million into a solar rooftop fund run by Solar City and another $75 million into Clean Power Finance’s home solar roof fund.
SunPower launched its solar lease program in 2011 and has helped power 20,000 homes with leased panels.
While solar energy business is booming, as solar technologies improve and the cost of solar panels become more affordable for an average family, captured solar still only accounts for well less than 1 quadrillion Btu out of an annual total of 96.5 quadrillion when you factor in all energy sources utilized in this country, including the burning of human waste, the use of natural gas and oil. The U.S. still relies heavily on coal nuclear energy to generate electricity.
Google isn’t the only corporation to invest heavily in solar power, but its latest million-dollar investment added to its previous healthy contributions will mark the company a leader in renewable energy promotion. The company announced just weeks ago that it would buy much of its energy from a wind farm in Iowa and now along with a $150 million investment from solar panel maker, SunPower, Google will provide $100 million to contribute to lease financing for thousands of American homeowners to add solar panels to their roof tops and clean energy to their mix.
While solar energy business is booming, as solar technologies improve and the cost of solar panels become more affordable for an average family, captured solar still only accounts for well less than 1 quadrillion Btu out of an annual total of 96.5 quadrillion when you factor in all energy sources utilized in this country, including the burning of human waste, the use of natural gas, and oil. The US still relies heavily on coal nuclear energy to generate electricity.
U.S. residential electricity prices are projected to rise steadily. Google recently told a correspondent from CNBC that 34 percent of the search engine company’s day-to-day operations are currently powered by reusable resources, and the company plans on investing over $1 billion in renewable energy.
Why is our country comparatively powering “progress” with loads of dirty energy?
The coal industry strips away valuable soil and pollutes heavily, leaving behind millions of tons of solid waste products annually, including fly ash, bottom ash and flue-gas desulfurization sludge that contain mercury, uranium, thorium, arsenic and other heavy metals. Nuclear energy shouldn’t even be a consideration considering that we are still coming to terms with the radiation levels from the Fukushima incident. The radioactive isotopes from this catastrophe are making Geiger counters everywhere soar with astronomical readings.
If Google has already managed to run its mega-corporation with 34 percent clean(er) energy, then surely our country can do better than running on less than 2 percent clean energy. We’ve got a long way to go. Hopefully the new leasing projects offered by Google and SunPower will help more Americans help kick the dirty energy habit.
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