Google’s Eric Schmidt Details Energy Plan, Chides Lack of Leadership

Written by Katie Fehrenbacher

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Posted September 9th, 2008 at 9:05 am in Energy,Hitlines,Policy,Yahoo! Buzz

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with Google’s energy gurus Dan Reicher and Bill Weihl, have so far served as the search giant’s most outspoken representatives of its plans to create new energy solutions. But at a dinner for the Corporate EcoForum on Monday night, Google CEO Eric Schmidt outlined a plan to wean the U.S. off of foreign oil, fight climate change and create green jobs. And Schmidt took direct aim at world leaders, contending: “We have a total failure of political leadership, at least in the U.S., and perhaps the world.”

In his speech, Schmidt called for 100 percent of U.S. power generation to come from green power in about 20 years, as well as the replacement of half of the nation’s traditional cars with plug-in hybrids. Cleaning up the power grid would lead to the creation of 500,000 jobs in wind alone, Schmidt claimed; his plan would also allegedly reduce emissions by half.

Schmidt also spoke at length about the antiquated power grid: “We’ve got to solve the grid problem,” he said, noting that 9 percent of efficiency is lost in the current architecture. And like most infotech titans, he called for integrating technologies borne out of the Internet revolution to the grid; sophisticated routing, switching and networking technologies didn’t yet exist when the grid was built. The opportunity to remake the grid is not unlike the opportunities of the Internet and the PC, he said...