Here I go again (10:00 a.m. EST, April 7, 2011).
The market is up (barely). Oil is up (barely). Bakken-based oil companies are starting to turn green.
Ten minutes ago CNBC reported that GE has announced it will build the world's largest solar power plant in the United States, location yet to be disclosed.
One minute ago, CNBC's crawler listed the Dow laggards in early trading. Three companies were listed: one was GE.
With regard to the GE solar plant, this is the story.
- $600 million-facility to make solar panels
- The company is still deciding on the location for the new facility
- First Solar will take a hit
"We're looking to make solar look like [GE's wind business] over the next five years," said Victor Abate, vice president of the company's renewable-energy division.Broke (without heavy subsidies and/or govt mandates).
I couldn't resist.
Exactly!
ReplyDeleteGoogle is one of the biggest investors in solar energy and look how badly they're doing. I mean, everyone knows the people who work at Google are dumb. Why else would they invest in solar? I don't understand why people claim companies like Google and Apple are innovators when they spend so much time energy and money on green technologies.
I don't think the folks at these companies are "dumb."
ReplyDeleteMuch of this is being driven by government mandates.
There is no government mandate that says Apple needs to meet high environmental standards. They're doing it on their own.
ReplyDeleteGoogle investing 115 Million in Brightsource Energy alone, plus millions in German solar energy isn't a federal mandate.
Here's an article with an interview describing Googles thoughts on coal energy
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/business&id=5788568
Note the date of your Google article on coal: 2007.
ReplyDeleteNote the location of the linked article: San Jose, California.
Check the renewable requirements mandated by California.
As long as we're on the subject, $115 million represents 1 percent of Google's operating cash flow (in other words, Google is investing a "rounding error" in solar energy with that $115 million).
ReplyDeleteBack in 2007, this investment protected Google against "cap and trade." That's no longer a worry.
Tax losses in solar will offset income taxes on other investments.
Investing in solar "buys" Google a seat at the table when the government starts talking about regulations that might affect Google.
Another way to think about this is that the $115 million came out of Google's marketing budget. How many times has the article you linked been downloaded, viewed, read, re-transmitted? I never would have seen that "ad" disguised as an article if I had not opened this discussion. I don't recall reading any Google ad as closely as I read that article.
Google's investment in renewables makes good sense to them. At least it did back in 2007. Ancient history in light of the Japanese nuclear disaster.
"It's hard to say whether the $600 million investment is a project to make solar panels, a project for an actual solar farm, or both"
ReplyDeleteThe article is describing a solar panel manufacturing facility. Nothing about solar power generation is described.
"The article says the $600 million-facility might be built at multiple locations ..."
The article says no such thing . The article is describing a site selection process in which multiple (candidate) locations are considered and the best site is then chosen.
The article is clear and easy to comprehend.
You are correct. I will correct the post.
ReplyDelete