Eleutherian

This Reuters article on Google made me feel all warm inside (Eleutherian warming). Basically, Google has decided to invest money in alternative energy technologies. Yet another private company displays that the government has no business spending taxpayer dollars on research by politically connected researchers.

Bill Weihl, a leading Google energy researcher, stated:

Typically what we're seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost. So a 250 megawatt installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It's a lot of money.

Weihl's team is attempting to cut the costs of producing key components to as much as one-fourth their current cost. Instead of taxpayer-funded government subsidies for otherwise uncompetitive technology, Google plans to use innovation to allow the technology to complete on its own economic merits. This is libertarian environmentalism that everyone can embrace.