Google in major bid for Eastern US wind power

AFP/DDP/File – An offshore wind power farm. Investors led by technology giant Google on Tuesday announced a five billion-dollar …

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Investors led by technology giant Google on Tuesday announced a five billion-dollar project to power the US East Coast with wind from the Atlantic Ocean, in an ambitious bid to spur alternative energy. The project would set up offshore wind turbines and a new transmission grid stretching 350 miles (565 kilometers) from New Jersey to Virginia, the most densely populated part of the United States which suffered blackouts in 2003.

 

Google, the Internet search giant whose interests now run the gamut from broadband to robotic cars, said it would provide 37.5 percent of the initial funding. Rick Needham, director of green business operations and strategy at Google, described the project as a new "superhighway" for alternative energy, creating jobs and eventually providing enough power to serve 1.9 million households.

"We're willing to take calculated risks on large-scale projects that can move an industry. Indeed, that is what's made our company so successful to date," Needham told a news conference in Washington.
The companies said they hoped to begin work on the project, called the Atlantic Wind Connection, in early 2013 and complete it by 2020, subject to government approval. Needham said Google was open to further investment later.

Good Energies, a company which invests in green energy, is also investing 37.5 percent in the project, while Japanese trading house Marubeni has a 15 percent stake. With the right incentives, wind power could meet one-fifth of the entire world's electricity demand within 20 years, environmentalists Greenpeace and an industry group said in a report released Tuesday in China.