Google Invests in Solar Energy

An interesting article from Fortune mentions that Google is not sticking strictly to search and internet investment.

Doug Buchanan grins with relief when he sees the carcasses. He has just driven up a steep dirt road onto a vast, sunbaked mesa overlooking the Mojave Desert in western Nevada. There, a few feet from the trail, lie the corpses of two steers. A raven perches on one, the only object more than three feet above the ground on this pancake-flat plateau. Cattle, dead or alive, qualify as good news in Buchanan's line of work. If cattle are present, that means grazing is permitted, and that in turn means that this land is most likely not protected habitat for the desert tortoise.

Buchanan, 53, is scouting sites for a solar power company called BrightSource Energy, an Oakland-based startup backed by Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500). The blunt, fifth-generation Californian, who used to survey the same area for natural-gas power sites, knows that the presence of an endangered species such as the tortoise could derail BrightSource's plans to build a multibillion-dollar solar energy plant on the mesa.

Green energy is not about to get a green light from all environmentalists. "We're going to challenge these big solar projects, and there's going to be tremendous environmental battles," says veteran California activist Phil Klasky, a member of several green groups who helped lead a campaign in the 1990s that scuttled a radioactive-waste dump planned in tortoise territory in the Mojave. "Large solar arrays will have an impact on surrounding critical habitat for the desert tortoise and other threatened species. We have to fight global warming, but just because it's solar doesn't make it right."

The developers are worried about resistance. "I remember the spotted owl," says Fred Morse, a former Department of Energy official who is a senior advisor to Abengoa's U.S. operations. The widespread logging of ancient forests, home to the northern spotted owl, set off epic environmental fights in the 1980s and '90s. As Morse puts it, "The Mohave ground squirrel or the desert tortoise - any one of them could become a cause."

Cloudy days ahead?? let the Sun Shine!