Google joins in Brightsource's $115m VC round

If Google was keen on finding a source of renewable energy, Greenbang would humbly suggest building a bonfire out of the wads and wads of large denomination notes that doubtless make up the company’s founders’ pocket change. Just throwing the spare wads of twenties that have slipped down the back of the sofa on the fire should be enough to keep the Google campus warm for a day or two.

But that wouldn’t be that environmentally friendly – Greenbang would imagine that burning notes would kick up a bit of an emissions funk – so instead, those nice folk over at Google have put on their VC cap and poured their funding into utility scale solar bunch Brightsource.

Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, was one of the investors in Brightsource’s series C funding round this week, which saw the company rake in $115 million, $10 million of which came from Google.

Brightsource said this about the shenanigans:

VantagePoint Venture Partners, the company’s initial investor, played a major role in forming the syndicate, which includes Google.org, BP Alternative Energy, StatoilHydro Venture and Black River. All of the company’s existing investors, including Morgan Stanley, DBL Investors (formerly a subsidiary of JP Morgan), Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Chevron Technology Ventures participated in the round.

It also said that it would be using the cash to “accelerate its plans”, but that doesn’t really tell us much.

The first of Brightsource’s Mojave Desert solar power plants should be up and running next year and it’s already got supply agreements in place with PG&E for 900MW.