Last week Google announced that the company, and its philanthropic subsidiary, Google.org, would explore research and develop renewable energy.  The goal is to ultimately produce one gigawatt of renewable energy and do so more cheaply that coal-generated electricity, which of course creates vast amounts of CO2.  I was thrilled to read the news reports of this announcement.

As someone who thinks about the future, converting global society to alternative and renewable types of energy and away from fossil fuels is perhaps the top challenge humanity faces.  The way this will get done is through creativity, innovation, technological breakthroughs and non-attachment to existing status quos. Sounds like something that Google is well prepared to do.  (Regular readers know that I have admired Google in the past; click on ‘Google’ in the archives at right).

Of course the traditional reaction to this announcement, mostly from those supposedly insightful “Wall Street Analysts” was to suggest the company was risking corporate focus on its’ core businesses.  Nonsense!  It was these types of conventional pundits that, a century ago suggested that the railroad companies were in the railroad and not transportation businesses.  Flying people in airplanes, nah, you guys are in the train business.  Using all your right of way real estate for development?  Nah, stick to the train business.

As readers of this column know, I have often …

In this eighth installment of our on-going series of interviews with some of the leading thinkers and scientists on the subject of energy, we interview Dr. Thomas Valone.

Facing and solving the multiple issues concerning energy is the single most pressing problem that we face as a species. There is a lot of media coverage about energy, alternative energy and global warming, but what has been missing is the knowledge and point of view of scientists, at least in the main stream media. If you have missed the first seven interviews, please scroll down the right side of the page and click on ‘Scientists – Interviews’.

Dr. Thomas Valone is a physicist and licensed professional engineer with 30 years professional experience, is a patent examiner, research engineer, instrumentation designer and also an author, lecturer, and consultant on future energy developments. He is President and founder of Integrity Research Institute and formerly a community college teacher and a Research Director for Scott Aviation-ATO, Inc. He helped design the HullCom® for naval intraship communication, a 60 Hz gaussmeter without harmonic distortion, two bioelectric therapy devices, and a dental mercury vapor ionizer-precipitator. He is editor of Future Energy, Energetic Processes Vol. I & II, Turning the Corner: Energy Solutions for the 21st Century and a few conference proceedings, as well as author of Zero Point Energy: The Fuel of the Future, Practical Conversion of Zero-Point Energy, Homopolar Handbook, Electrogravitics Vol. 1 & II, Bioelectromagnetic Healing, Bush-Cheney Energy Study, Clinton Administration Energy Study and about 100 …