As a result Google will be investing in wind, solar and plug-in hybrid technology. Here’s a quote from Google’s press release about the plan.

“Lots of groups are doing great work trying to produce inexpensive renewable energy. We want to add something that moves these efforts toward even cheaper technologies a bit more quickly. Usual investment criteria may not deliver the super low-cost, clean, renewable energy soon enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” said Dr. Larry Brilliant, Executive Director of Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, “Google.org’s hope is that by funding research on promising technologies, investing in promising new companies, and doing a lot of R&D ourselves, we may help spark a green electricity revolution that will deliver breakthrough technologies priced lower than coal.”

This is obviously an exciting development. There’s still a long way to go from here. But it should now be obvious to everyone that clean energy and the technology surrounding it will be the catalysts for the next great wave of innovation coming out of the United States.

According to the story in Fortune magazine, “…by 2009 more than a third of Kleiner’s latest fund, which was raised in 2006 and totals $600 million, will be invested in technologies that aim to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. Already Kleiner has invested more than $270 million from various funds in 26 companies that make everything from microbes that scrub old oil wells to electric cars to noncorn ethanol.”

There’s no doubt that we will continue to see the investment money moving to Energy 2.0. It’s heartening to find concrete evidence that market forces are in play at a time when the U.S. hasn’t come close to the peak of incentives that we should be providing these types of companies.

Al Gore joins Kleiner Perkins to save the planet – Nov. 12, 2007