Business, Government Legal News from throughout WVGoogle Dumps Program That Funded Discovery of W.Va. Geothermal Potential

Last year, West Virginia energy officials and policy makers lit up to the news of the discovery of greater geothermal energy potential in West Virginia just last year, but the company that backed the initiative says the program wasn't having the impact they had hoped.

In a Google Blog post yesterday, Urs Hölzle, senior vice president, operations and Google fellow, wrote in a series of "off-season spring cleaning" blog posts, that several of Google services were being shuttered for less than expected impact.

The search giant's non-profit arm invested millions in renewable energy technology through their Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE<C) program.

"At this point, other institutions are better positioned than Google to take this research to the next level," Hölzle wrote. "So we've published our results to help others in the field continue to advance the state of power tower technology, and we've closed our efforts."

Google started the initiative to help renewable energy sources break the barrier of higher costs to overcome traditional fossil fuels.

"We will continue our work to generate cleaner, more efficient energy—including our on-campus efforts, procuring renewable energy for our data centers, making our data centers even more efficient and investing more than $850 million in renewable energy technologies," Hölzle wrote.

The initiative was launched in 2007. One of their projects they supported was to make the "first Geothermal Map of the United States." The effort, conducted through Southern Methodist University, resulted in some surprising findings, including previously unknown geothermal potential under West Virginia.

Google ultimately invested about $10 million in enhanced geothermal systems technology. Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page said at the onset of the program that the technology giant was dedicated to shifting the cost advantage from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

"We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal," Page said in a 2007 news release. "With talented technologists, great partners and significant investments, we hope to rapidly push forward. Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades."

The hottest areas, and thus those with the most potential in West Virginia  were found below Tucker, Randolph, Pocahontas, and Greenbrier counties. Those areas showed potential for generating baseload energy production. In the study, West Virginia was identified as the ""most attractive area for geothermal energy development in the eastern one-third of the country."

The SMU Geothermal Laboratory found West Virginia's geothermal generation potential is about 18,890 megawatts, about 75 percent higher than previously estimated. G

The geothermal data is available as a layer on Google Earth, where users can pinpoint geothermal heat estimates across U.S.

RE<C also invested money in American wind and solar energy programs during its tenure. According to their website, the project has been a success, and it is now time for other companies to continue their research, which has been published online and made publicly available.

"Over the last few years, we've seen a lot of progress in clean energy. We're excited that some technologies are so quickly approaching cost competitiveness with traditional forms of energy in parts of the US and the world," the RE<C website states. "Power tower technology has come a long way, too. But the installed cost of solar photovoltaic technology has declined dramatically over the past few years, making solar photovoltaic technology a compelling choice for consumers."

RE<C was just one of seven projects Google announced would be shut down this week. Also slated for closure was Google Knol, Google Search Timeline, Google Gear, Google Friend Connect, Google Bookmarks Lists and Google Wave.