Today Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, has unveiled a $4.4 trillion plan dubbed "Clean Power by 2030" that, according to its creators, has the potential to significantly decrease the U.S. dependency on oil and fossil fuels while allowing for an estimated $1 trillion in profits before the program comes to an end in 2030.

The news was first posted on Google.org's official blog by Dan Reicher and Jeffery Greenblatt, who started out the announcement by stating that this in particular, with a new Administration and Congress focusing on energy-related matters, would be the ideal time to move from theory to action.

While the plan is certainly demanding both in terms of money and effort, cost/benefit estimates guarantee that, by deploying it within the next 22 years, the returns that America would get from it would be over $5.4 trillion, meaning an estimated $1 trillion in profits before 2030, with such figures destined to grow even more in the following years. The program would also create a considerable number of high-profile jobs.

In more detail, the plan concentrates on points such as improving the electrical efficiency, raising the car fuel efficiency from 31 to 45 mpg, cutting the oil use in cars by 40%, and massively promoting the use of hybrid and electric cars to the American public. Major efforts would also have to be done in order to build the infrastructures to allow the distribution of electrical power generated by renewable sources such as wind, solar and even geothermal — an estimated 32,000 km of new transmission lines.

Greenblatt hopes that the plan could reduce energy use by 33% thanks to energy-efficiency measures including smart meters and real time pricing based on the instantaneous energy reserves and demand, which would be necessary since power sources like solar and wind are heavily dependant on the weather. A complete analysis can be found at this Knol page authored by Greenblatt himself.

Under the new renewable energy plan, wind power is envisi
oned to generate 380 GW (gigaWatt), while solar power should provide an average of 250. The geothermal source of energy would produce around 80 GW and is expected to take a greater role as technology gains in maturity.

This may indeed be one of the most favorable times to put such a plan in practise: nanotechnology in particular is expected to bring unprecedented technological advances especially in the field of solar power, with the creation of significantly more efficient solar panels. Stanford Assistant Professor Yi Cui is just one of the many high-profile researchers working specifically on creating solar panels that will be able to exploit the full potential of nanotechnology applied to this renewable source of energy.

At this time, typical efficiency values for domestic solar panels rarely go beyond 20%, while satellite technology can reach up to 20-30% for a much higher cost. Research in the nanotech field has shown increases of up to 5-6%, but it is safe to say that our current inability to manipulate nanoscale objects puts a realistic hope to see significantly more efficient solar panels at least 5-10 years from now.

Still, when it comes to electric cars, analysts tend to be much more optimistic: today's technology does in fact allow us to build electric cars with respectable mileage — 300 miles between charges — and research is bringing to better and better results every day. The much discussed Tesla Motors is working its way in the market from its first electric supercar, the "Tesla Roadster", to gradually start producing more and more affordable vehicles once they will be able to cut the production costs.

As noted in the Google post, Al Gore issued an even harder challenge in his attempt to push for 100% clean energy production within the next ten years. "We hope the American public pushes our leaders to embrace it", explained Greenblatt. "T. Boone Pickens has weighed in with an interesting plan of his own to massively deploy wind energy, among other things. Other plans have also been developed in recent years that merit attention." In other words, the potential is all there, but the American people will have to collaborate for an effort of this stature to be successful.