Google Now One Step Closer to Saving the World

Google is about to become a major investor in the world’s biggest solar power plant.

According to Mashable, Google has just confirmed a deal to invest $168 million to fund a new solar power project at BrightSource energy, the world’s biggest solar tower energy plant in the Mojave desert.

Google’s investment will go to fund the Ivanpah project, and innovative solar power configuration that gathers sunlight beamed from an array of large mirrors at a single tower, which uses the beamed light to create steam, spin a turbine, and generate electricity. Mashable describes the the Ivanpah project as “’an environmentally responsible design,’ to deliver reliable, clean and low-cost power to Californians, according to the project’s website.”

Ostensibly, at least, the project’s principal goal is to provide green energy to power its own server farms and data storage facilities, which Google has been trying to turn carbon neutral for some time. This was the professed reason behind Google’s application last February to become a licensed energy utility.

“Right now, we can’t buy affordable, utility-scale, renewable energy in our markets,” Google said at the time. If they couldn’t buy it from someone else, they’d make it themselves. It’s the same roll-up-your-sleeves corporate attitude that lead Google to announce that it was laying its own broadband network in the ground to run up to 100 times faster regular American broadband: “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

Fortunately for the planet, Google does seem to be taking its long-standing corporate credo “Don’t be evil” seriously. Instead of using its considerable power only to multiply profits, it’s using its considerable power to multiply profits in a way that could better the world.

Upon getting approved to become a power utility last February, Google was asked about its plans to eventually provide green energy to consumers. “We don’t have any concrete plans,” a spokesperson said, but continued. “We want the ability to buy and sell electricity in case it becomes part of our portfolio.”

Forget the company’s struggles with mastering social media. That’s small potatoes. If Google continues at this clip, you might find yourself in 20 years racing around the internet at the speed of light on Google-owned wires, cruising in a Google self-driving car, with your house running on 100% renewable energy, courtesy of Google Electric.

Is it a little scary to see one company becoming so powerful? No scarier than it is to see one government possess so much power—and at least these guys can actually get stuff done.