Ken Silverstein | May 01, 2013

It’s a natural marriage that is catching on: High-tech and green-tech are getting together, giving companies greater reliability and cleaner processes while also allowing alternatives energies to scale up. The latest such deal is being spearheaded by Verizon, which will invest $100 million in solar panels and fuel cells.

Verizon is joining Apple and Google in the effort to not just finance the growth of sustainable technologies but to also fuel their own operations with cleaner energies and to reduce their carbon footprints. As for the telecom operator, it says that it will own its systems and apply those investments to its corporate offices and data centers.

“This is a natural evolution of our sustainability efforts and of our use of alternative energy to power a variety of our facilities,” says James Gowen, Verizon’s chief sustainability officer. “These projects will reduce our carbon footprint, relieve demand on our electrical grid and enhance the resiliency of our proven service continuity -- even during outages.”

The company’s investment will be allocated to rooftop solar panels and to fuel cell energies that can power whole campuses. Verizon says that this move will help it reach its goal of cutting its carbon intensity in half by 2020. Specifically, it is working with CleanEdge Power, which is building the distributed fuel cell power systems that will run on natural gas. The company has also signed a multi-year agreement with SunPower Corp. to deploy the solar panels.

Verizon is not new to the clean tech world. It operates one of the largest fuel cell sites that helps power an environmentally-friendly call switching center in New York State. It also uses 26 solar-assisted cell sites in remote areas in the western United States. Verizon’s Gowen told Greentech media that all of its green-tech investments will achieve positive returns through reduced energy utility bills, improved reliability and by cutting carbon emissions.

Apple, too, has made similar investments. It just cranked up the first part of a foray involving solar panels and fuel cells in North Carolina. Those systems will service the company’s $1 billion facility there. Apple says that all of its investments are paying off and that it has already achieved 100 percent renewable power at each of its data centers. It says that its corporate facilities are 75 percent of the way there.

Google, meanwhile, has invested about $1 billion in green energy projects. It has said that it will focus on funding the ventures of others -- not on trying to invent clean energy forms that can replace coal power. That tack is a better way to make money for its shareholders than trying to solve the world’s energy problems. 



The globe’s largest internet search engine says that it will feed the voracious appetite of its data centers with green energy. But it has found that sustainable fuels cannot be produced in large enough quantities to do the job. So, it has tried to use its brain power to make such inventions real. But it has recently scrapped that tactic: It, for example, dropped its effort to build cost-efficient solar panels, as well as its home energy management system.

What is practical, however, is investing in projects created by true experts. For now, it is loaning that money to developers with track records. Not only has Google been getting the cash grants from the U.S. Treasury for those investments but it is also earning a reasonable interest rate from its borrowers.

Google has long fueled the solar sector’s growth. It has invested $280 million in SolarCity that builds residential solar panels. It has also ventured into utility-scale solar by placing $168 million into BrightSource Energy’s 370- megawatt Ivanpah plant in the California desert.

Certainly, the tax breaks have incentivized companies to invest in solar panels, wind farms and fuel cells. But the unions between the high-tech and the green-tech sectors will give the alternative fuels the extra oomph they need to reduce costs and to deploy more units. 




EnergyBiz Insider has been awarded the Gold for Original Web Commentary presented by the American Society of Business Press Editors. The column is also the Winner of the 2011 Online Column category awarded by Media Industry News, MIN. Ken Silverstein has been honored as one of MIN’s Most Intriguing People in Media.

Twitter: @Ken_Silverstein

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