Renewable Energy Jobs at Google

A recruiter from Google recently contacted me and asked if I would put a note on here that they are looking for candidates for their Renewable Energy Group. You may recall that I previously wrote a post covering several companies – Green Job Opportunities. This one is specifically for Google. Below is their call for qualified people to take up the challenge of supplying clean energy to the world.

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Environmental sustainability in the face of global climate change is a high priority for Google because, as our business grows, so does our demand for energy. We’ve worked hard to increase our efficiency and become carbon-neutral, but when it comes to buying clean and affordable electricity we still have limited options. We’ve recently announced that we’re taking a first step toward tackling this important challenge.

Business as usual: will not deliver low-cost, clean energy fast enough to avoid potentially catastrophic climate change. We need a clean energy solution that will deliver breakthrough technologies priced lower than carbon-intensive alternatives such as coal. Google is launching an internal R&D group to develop electricity from renewable energy sources at a cost less than coal. This initiative will explore advanced solar thermal power, high-altitude wind, enhanced geothermal systems, and eventually other breakthrough technologies as well.

Head of Renewable Energy: http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=81799&query=energy&topic=&type=energy

Renewable Energy Engineer: http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=81800&query=energy&topic=&type=energy

If you know other outstanding engineers who may be interested in joining the team, I encourage you to pass along this information as we are hiring for multiple positions.

9 thoughts on “Renewable Energy Jobs at Google”

  1. Robert, could you list any opportunities in Europe as well?

    I know that especially in Germany there is a lot of research, but it is very hard to find names of all these small companies.
    It would be extremely helpful to have some links or names of companies (except for the big ones everyone knows).

  2. No Thomas, maybe they will pick you up in this: Tracking the Google Founder’s Plane

    I don’t begrudge Sergey & Larry’s wealth or their toys. What rubs me the wrong way about this is that Google’s public image is at odds with what they really do.

    Slap some solar panels on the roof in Mountain View and people give you a pass on your power hungry server farms. Put some cute polar bear logos on the banner page and do some earth day promotion and people swoon over your green image.

    Congress hauls energy company execs before congress demanding to know about profit and salaries and how much they are spending on alternative energy. Yet Google makes a 25% profit margin and is spending 1/10 of the budget on alternatives that my company is spending. So who is greener???

    The fact of the matter is that Google is one of the few companies that could afford to pay more for green power. They could take their profit margins down to say, ExxonMobil’s level, and buy lots of wind and solar power for their servers. Rather than locate their server farms in places like Lithuania – to take advantage of cheap, unsafe, Soviet-era nuclear generated electricity – they could afford to go to Germany and sign up for wind power.

    Here is another link: Server farns becoming a cash crop

    And the money quote:
    At the MidAmerica Industrial Park in Oklahoma, amid a Gatorade plant, a pipe manufacturer and nearly 80 other companies, Google is piecing together a plain-looking 100,000-square-foot building it will stock with servers. Next to the industrial park stands a coal-fired electrical generating plant operated by the Grand River Dam Authority.

    Gee, I wonder why Google picked Pryor, OK? Could it be all the renewable energy produced in Oklahoma?

    Google could move their servers a few hundred miles west to Pampa, TX to take advantage of the massive wind project. One of the main issues with the project is the lack of a transmission network to export the power.

    Google could actually CHOOSE to be greener. Instead they choose to greenwash their image.

  3. Way to go Google! This is somewhat exciting, I’ve recently been a fan of focusing on grids over doomed personal transportation. I’m a fan of thermal solar applications and intuitively skeptical of PV. Computers seem like they may be worth keeping running. Sounds like something may happen, and possibly benefit society. I’d check out a job like that, there’s a google office in my town.

  4. King:

    A better idea for Google: Put server farms in Thompson, Manitoba. The Nelson river has most of the northern midwest as a drainage basin and Lake Winnipeg as a reservoir (11th largest lake in the world). Manitoba Hydro generates 97% of the province’s power with hydroelectric and is already shipping close to $1 billion of surplus electricity into the US. They have a 900km HVDC line that runs from the Nelson to Winnipeg.

    It’s way smarter to put the datacenter near the hydroelectric station and run data fiber than to run HVDC to the datacenter. The other benefit is that in a northern climate cooling is way more efficient and for several months of the year the sub-zero temperatures mean they could possibly recover some of the datacenter heat with an ORC and have it generate some power rather than the massive A/C energy drain cooling in California.

    On a related note: Manitoba Hydro recently signed a deal to ship Wisconsin 500MW of hydro down HVDC.

  5. The comments about locating servers near wind and hydro power are right on the mark. Even though electrical transmission is efficient per se, the sheer volume of wasted energy in doing so is frightening. So if Google heeded those suggestions, they would be living more up to their motto, and hopefully leading others to do the same.

  6. Blogger Sara said…

    I am very concerned about the environment, and I would love to work a green job for Google!

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