Google CEO Schmidt lays out U.S. energy ideas

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States should use part of any future economic stimulus package to connect wind turbines and solar energy to the nation’s electricity grid, said Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, an advisor to President-elect Barack Obama.

In a wide-ranging speech, Schmidt, who has been mentioned as a candidate to become Obama’s chief technology officer, argued on Tuesday that the United States should begin investing heavily in bringing wind and solar power into the mainstream.

“There is no grid where the wind and the solar is. The people are in the cities. So the simplest thing that we have to do is we have to address the grid problem,” said Schmidt, a member of president-elect Obama’s economic advisory transition team, although not speaking in that role.

“You have a command and control (power) grid designed in the 1960s,” Schmidt told a New America Foundation event.

Schmidt also said slowing the growth of energy consumption was important, and called for a plan to give matching funds to state utilities working to improve energy efficiency, and differential tax treatment for more efficient cars.

Reuters