Below is an article from Business Spectator which I have linked to and also taken the liberty of reprinting in full because I believe it is extraordinarily important and reflective of both the opportunity climate change presents business and also indicative of why the gold rush 2.0 is well underway.

Google’s search for smart power
February 24, 2010
Giles Parkinson

Most people expect there to be a transformation of the energy industry, but what if it turns out to be a total revolution?

Most talk focuses on a possible move to distributed rather than centralised power supplies, the introduction of smart grids and the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy supplies such as wind, solar, marine and geothermal.

In other words, the structure of the industry pretty much remains the same, except for a few whiz-bang technologies that make it greener, more efficient and more available.

But what if it went further than that, and the whole industry was turned upside down? Two developments in the past few days in the US give a hint of what is being envisaged and what might be possible - the entry of Google into the energy utility business and the much-hyped release of the stand-alone fuel cell, the Bloom Box.

Solar

Last Friday, Google was granted a licence to operate as a utility by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, joining other companies with massive warehouse complexes and large energy needs such as retailing giants Wal-Mart and Safeway, consumer goods company Kimberley Clark and pharmaceutical group Merck. The idea is that they will use the massive land and roof areas to establish solar arrays or other energy source to meet some of their own energy needs. The utility status means that if they generate excess energy, they can sell it to other customers.

What makes Google different is that is has long been a vocal advocate of renewable energy, calling for the US grid to be 100 per cent renewable by 2030, and has backed this talk with significant investments in leading solar companies eSolar and Brightsource, creating one of the largest solar arrays in the US, funding two US geothermal developers, and also investing heavily in Makani Power, a company developing high altitude kites to develop wind energy.

Google’s ‘green energy czar’ Bill Weih says the company is developing its own technology to increase the efficiency of solar thermal energy. The company believes it could also make wind a cheaper source of energy than coal.

Additionally, the company is investing heavily in energy efficiency, pumping cash into a smart grid specialist called Silver Spring Networks and launching its own ‘Powermeter’ real time energy reporting technology.

This is where it starts to get interesting. If Google were to combine its own energy sources, energy efficiency technology, software monitoring and massive data centres there would be huge scope to help manage power consumption for large buildings, industrial sites and other major consumers.

The possibilities are myriad. Either Google constructs a system that helps customers save large amounts of energy, and shares in the savings, or delivers a data management contract and throws in the energy use for free or at a hugely discounted price. As industry specialist Grentech Media suggested the other day, Google could undercut search engine rivals by providing a suite of services including energy supply.

Bloom Box

One of the technologies that Google has also been testing in the last 18 months, along with eBay and logistics group FedEx, is the Bloom Box, a stand alone fuel source not unlike the BlueGen unit developed by Australia’s Ceramic Fuel Cells.

What supposedly distinguishes the Bloom Box from BlueGen and dozens of other fuel cell technologies being developed across the globe is its scalability and its cost. The basic premise of the technology is that it would allow many communities to simply do away with utilities and power grids.

The Bloom is being unveiled this week in the US in a carefully orchestrated media campaign that started with exclusive interviews with Bloom founder K.R. Sridhar on the high profile US 60 Minutes program and in Fortune magazine, and will continue with a major media launch scheduled for Thursday morning Australian time.

The Bloom, it seems, came from an idea developed in planning for the US Mars Mission, when Sridhar developed a device that would create oxygen and water on the planet. When that mission was ditched by NASA, Sridhar decided to reverse the process and use oxygen and another fuel to create energy. As stories go, that’s about as good as it gets.

The Bloom Boxes to be unveiled this week are said to cost around $800,000 a unit. Four of them have been used to power a Google data centre for the past 18 months and eBay is reported to have saved $100,000 in energy costs in a single year from using three units.

Sridhar told 60 Minutes and Fortune this week that he hoped to release a household-sized device that costs around $3000 within a few years. That remains to be seen, and so far we don’t know much about the costs and what sort of fuel can be used as an input.

Eight years of development, some $US400 million of investments and some very big reputations depend on its success. It was Kleiner Perkins’ first investment in greentech after the dot.com boom and bust, and the company is said to be counting on Bloom to deliver its first major cleantech winner. So an IPO can’t be far away.

You can find out more about the Bloom Box on the Fast Company where they have a couple of articles on the Bloom Box Specs and a bit of a backstory.

Grab a shovel, ’cause here comes the Gold Rush!