Statement of Bernadette Del Chiaro, Clean Energy Advocate, Environment California Research & Policy Center
In searching for a smart and responsible clean energy investment,
the popular web search engine, Google, returned more than a million hits with
their newly announced 1.6 megawatt (1.6 million watts) solar power system.
According to the company’s press release, a 1.6 MW solar
power system is in the works at their Mountain
View campus shaving 30% of their peak electricity
demands. The sheer size of this single installation, one of the largest proposed
in the state, makes this project notable and worthy of praise.
This past August, Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law
the Million Solar Roofs bill, SB 1 (Murray), creating the statewide goal of
building a million solar roofs within ten years. If such a goal is reached, California will have
3,000 MW of clean solar electricity, a nearly 30-fold increase from today’s
solar power capacity.
With their 1.6 MW project, Google is joining the 25,000
other California
businesses and homeowners who have also invested in solar power. More
importantly, Google is leading the business community by example demonstrating
that going green and saving money go hand-in-hand.
We’ve long referred to solar power as the next “Silicon Valley” industry for California, bringing clean energy and new
jobs to the state. Today’s announcement by Google shows that Silicon Valley’s
leading companies will play a leading role in realizing this vision and in
making solar power as mainstream as the personal computer.
Environment California
applauds Google’s investment in solar power.
