Today the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission has granted “Google Energy” the official right energy, capacity, and services at market prices just like a utility. Google Energy is a new subsidiary of the search giant Google.

Now Google is saying that they want this to happen in their eternal quest to become carbon neutral. Yes, this makes sense. A recent study found (and Google confirmed it on their blog) that each Google search that you make uses about 7 grams of CO2 or about the same amount of energy as boiling a cup of water. Now that may sound minimal, but when we notice that 91,000,000 Google searches are preformed on average per day, it starts to raise some serious eyebrows. Google uses A LOT of energy!

This new permission granted by the FERC will allow Google to erect solar panels and wind turbines to offset this energy, but it also gives them the ability to sell the access energy to us like any other utility.

Now this is great and all, and I am sure that Google is doing this with the best of intentions, but I couldn’t help but think when I first read this article: “This seems a whole lot like ENRON”. The good news is that Enron already made their mistake once, and if another gigantic company tries to do the same, someone will be watching. I just could help but humor myself with the idea.