Another way to look at it, now that Google has functional maps of the world, the oceans, the moon and the stars, they are turning their attention to harnessing the power of the most prominent star in our collective lives, the Death Star the sun, of course. No, Google isn’t buying Britain’s ever-popular gossip mag/newspaper, although, the contextual ads for Page 3 would be fun. Instead, Google is investing in a company that specializes in harnessing the power of the sun, as they further the drive to reduce the footprint, as well as the cost of living, for homeowners who are actively seeking alternate methods of providing power to their dwelling.

To facilitate the push for cleaner energy, Google has partnered with SolarCity, a company that, like the name suggests, focuses on bringing solar power to the people. Google’s contribution comes in the way of financial support, to the tune of $280 million. For comparison’s sake, President Obama pledged $250 million to the smart grid project, 30 million less than Google’s investment into solar power. Do with that knowledge what you will.

Google’s blog entry has more on their partnership with SolarCity:

Today, we’re announcing that we’ve investing $280 million to create a fund that will help SolarCity finance more solar installations across the country. This is our largest clean energy project investment to date and brings our total invested in the clean energy sector to more than $680 million. We’ve also launched a partnership to offer SolarCity services to Googlers at a discount.

A Google engineer, Michael Flaster, was apparently the inspiration for Google’s interest into SolarCity. According to the information provided, Flaster, an active solar power user/SolarCity customer, stands to save $100 a month on his energy bills. Over the life of Flaster’s lease of SolarCity’s equipment, he could save an estimated $16,000, an idea I’m sure most homeowners would get behind.

As indicated, SolarCity offers an equipment leasing program, of which, Google has more details:

In SolarCity’s innovative financing model, the company covers installation and maintenance of the system over the life of the lease. You can prepay, or pay nothing upfront after which you make monthly solar lease payments.

There’s also a promotional video leading this post, highlighting some of the benefits of solar energy. Does anyone think it’s telling that Google invested more in this particular project than the U.S. Government did in updating the country’s aging energy grid?

eBay said it will reach its goal through an ongoing commitment to energy efficiency and conservation along with its continuing investment in renewable energy. It will promote more sustainable behavior tied to travel and personal energy use among its 15,000 employees.

 "eBay continues to demonstrate our long-term commitment to responsible energy use and environmental leadership with our first greenhouse gas emissions reduction target," said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe.

"As a company whose business continues to grow year over year, we recognize that the goal is ambitious, but we’re confident that it is achievable."

The company says it has a relatively small carbon footprint with the majority of its environmental impact coming from energy used by its data centers. In 2010, eBay is set to unveil a new "green" data center that will house more than a third of its global data infrastructure.

Last year, eBay opened a 197,000 square foot office building in San Jose, which features a 650 kW solar installation and has been LEED Gold certified. The company plans a fuel cell strategy for early 2010.
 

It’ll still be quite a while before that free electricity offsets the initial cost of the system, but at least the panels have earned Google a little positive PR.  The Earth Times Online, for example, states, “The Google system is also now the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the United States.”

To help people grasp the size of this development, Google has even created a new performance monitoring site; I’m told that, over the past day, those solar panels have generated enough electricity to run almost 6,000 loads of laundry.  There are interesting charts, as well – as it is solar power Google’s using, you’ll note that output drops to zero overnight.

That’s not a problem, though.  “The system will offset peak electricity consumption at the solar powered offices and the newly constructed solar carports have charging stations for the plug-in hybrids,” writes Dan Reicher, Google.org’s Director of Climate and Energy Initiatives, on the Official Google Blog.

Google’s got deep pockets; its attitude towards solar power could change the way a lot of important people think.  And even if the search engine company didn’t just affect the whole oil industry, well . . . the power of positive PR could wipe out some bad feelings.