Google's Best Bet: Organzing Energy Use to reduce CO2 emissions

[Great article in Gigaom on how companies like Google can make money on the energy market. I have long argued that this is where future business opportunities lie with “gCommerce” – green Commerce.

The energy market is orders of magnitude larger than Internet market or click advertising. It is also a market limited by resource scarcity, which ultimately means increased costs and larger opportunities for revenue growth ( this is how the oil companies have become so rich). The internet and “e”Commerce on the other hand are markets of abundance where is scarcity is only an artifact created by the carriers. In markets of abundance, costs will inevitably go down, as will revenue opportunities. What we need to do is create revenue opportunities in markets of scarcity in exchange for offering free services in markets of abundance. For some examples please see http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/

Google and other companies don’t have to wait for smart meters and smart grids in order to realize revenue from the energy market. There already exists a trillion dollar market in energy resale –where you don’t have to make single investment in infrastructure or equipment. The only cost to get in, is a license fee of a couple thousand dollars per state or province. Unfortunately that low entry fee and huge revenue potential has attracted a lot of unsavory companies and the energy re-sale market today is characterized by shady business practices and millions of customer complaints.

If companies like Google entered the market they could use their “click advertising” skills to quickly drive down costs and also provide an aura of credibility and respectability to the industry. Companies like Google could also be big drivers in gCommerce to help consumers reduce their CO2 footprint by offering virtual products and services in exchanging for the consumer purchasing renewable power at a premium to conventional dirty power. Some excerpts from the GigaOm article–BSA]




http://gigaom.com/2008/10/07/googles-best-energy-bet-organizing-energy-usage/

Google’s Best Energy Bet: Organizing Energy Usage

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information — be it via search, email, online maps or mobile apps — but it could someday help you manage your daily energy consumption, too. At a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that as part of its recently announced collaboration with GE, the search engine giant is currently looking at designing tools to help consumers understand their energy consumption. Google has also been actively looking at utilities’ smart meter projects, he said, and at using its strong connection with consumers to play a role in consumer energy management.

Helping consumers, even utilities, manage energy data is a perfect fit for Google. The power grid in its current form won’t be able to support the loads — inefficient and unintelligent, it has yet to benefit from the technologies of the information age. Meanwhile, at the edges of the grid, consumers know very little about their energy use; monthly electricity bills have an appalling lack of transparency and options compared to industries like cell phones.

That said, there probably isn’t a company that has changed consumer behavior online more than Google. It has not only shaped how consumers access information. So Google is wise to be looking into online tools, or even a wireless home networking product, that could help consumers change their energy consumption behavior. They’re clearly headed in that direction: “It seems obvious to me that if you give [energy] information to end users they behave smartly,” Schmidt said in his speech. “So we are working on that.” It could ultimately be the most important contribution Google makes to fighting climate change. As Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency notes, advanced technology deployments will take several decades and a lot of capital. Simple tools that can affect the behavior of the average consumer’s energy usage will be more cost-effective and can be implemented now.