the Internet search leader and its philanthropic arm will pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a quest to lower the cost of producing electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind and the sun.

If Google realizes its goal, the cost of solar power should fall by 25 percent to 50 percent says co-founder Larry Page.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company initially hopes to harvest cleaner-burning electricity to meet its own needs and sell power to other users or license the technology that emerges from its initiative, dubbed “Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal.”

“If we achieve these goals, we are going to be in the (electricity) business in a very big way,” Page said. “We should be able to make a lot of money from this.”

“As Google grows, we don’t want the business to become part of the problem. We want to be part of the solution,” said Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org.

Toward that end, Google aims to produce 1 gigawatt of power from renewable energy at prices below the rates of electricity generated at coal-burning plants. One gigawatt of power would be enough to supply the needs of a city the size of San Francisco.

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