In the past two weeks, Google has made two staggeringly large renewable energy investments: a $168 million investment in the Ivanpah solar farm, and a $100 million investment in the world's largest wind farm . We had a chance to speak with the man behind these investments--Rick Needham, Google's Director of Green Business Operations and Strategy (pictured in stylish duds, center)--to find out why the search engine giant has seemingly all of a sudden become a major clean energy player. When Needham came to Google in 2008, the company had already made early-stage clean energy investments through Google.org (the company's philanthropic arm), but Needham spent most of his time figuring out how to make Google's own operations more energy efficient.
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