(Cross-posted from The Official YouTube Blog)

Since the BP oil spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, over six million gallons of oil have poured into the water. Now you can see what’s happening firsthand on YouTube, through a live stream of the leak on PBS NewsHour’s YouTube channel. Today, BP will begin their “top kill” procedure, which will attempt to drill mud into the well to block the flowing oil. Thanks to the urging of Congress, you’ll be able to witness the entire process in real-time on YouTube.

Now that you can see what’s going on, PBS and YouTube want you to submit your best ideas, via Google Moderator, on how to stop this environmental catastrophe. PBS NewsHour will air some of the top YouTube submissions in their broadcast tomorrow evening and online:



Many of you have already come up with creative solutions on how to stop the leak or clean up the spill, and you’re using video to make these ideas come to life. Here are a few innovative examples:



Tune in to the live stream here, and if you have ideas you think BP should hear, submit them before 5 p.m. (ET) tomorrow.

Posted by Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits & Activism Manager, YouTube

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Today we are excited to offer a new way for many more people to access Google PowerMeter: our new Featured Device partner Current Cost - the largest global supplier of real time displays for monitoring energy use. Having already sold one million energy monitoring devices, Current Cost will now offer devices that are compatible with Google PowerMeter. They will also offer upgrades to existing customers so that they too can monitor their energy consumption anywhere online with our software.

Devices that integrate with Google PowerMeter will first be available in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Current Cost uses the Google PowerMeter API that we released back in March and joins others as a Featured Device partner that allows customers to understand their energy use. Our partnership is another example of hardware meeting our software to help customers save energy and money.

E.ON, one of the UK’s largest utilities, has also teamed up with Current Cost to offer its customers a Google PowerMeter compatible energy monitor as part of its free “Energy Fit Starter Pack.”

Current Cost estimates that their customers have already saved close to 400,000 tons of CO2 through monitoring their electricity use. One Australian restaurant recently learned that something as easy as turning off their coffee pots each night would save them $3,000 dollars per year.

Curious how you can start saving? Sign up for Google PowerMeter today.

Posted by Scott Coleman, Partnership Development Manager, Google.org

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When creating Google Flu Trends, we decided early on to make all of our estimates of flu activity available to the public for download. We’re always excited to hear about researchers using this data and recently learned about a study which compares Google Flu Trends estimates of flu activity with estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Almost any public health expert will tell you that there isn’t a single perfect measure of flu activity. Instead, there are several good measures, each of which tells a slightly different story. A good picture of flu activity emerges when these stories are examined together. One such measure is the CDC’s influenza-like illness surveillance network (ILINet) which shows the proportion of people who visit a physician with flu-like symptoms such as fever, cough and sore throat. This network can highlight areas where activity is unusually high given the time of year but cannot provide insight into the specific pathogens which are causing the illness. Another is the CDC’s Virologic Surveillance which shows the proportion of people who visit a physician, get tested, and have lab-confirmed influenza. This network shows the specific strains of influenza in circulation but can be affected by changes in testing practices, making it difficult to interpret the data over long periods of time.

We collaborated with the CDC when designing Google Flu Trends and decided to build a system that would make estimates based on the CDC’s ILINet data. Historically, we’ve shown a strong correlation with CDC’s ILINet data, typically with a correlation of greater than 0.9 (or more than 90% accurate as compared with CDC’s ILINet data). This recent study shows that Google Flu Trends is 72% accurate as compared with CDC's Virologic Surveillance data. This doesn't come as much of a surprise since the virologic data is telling a different story than the ILInet data. However, it’s good to see research showing the differences in these measures, as it highlights the need for multiple networks to exist.

We provide Google Flu Trends as an additional source of information for helping to understand the flu season. Google Flu Trends helps paint the picture of flu activity by providing estimates daily while some traditional flu surveillance systems can take days or weeks to collect and release data.

Posted by Matt Mohebbi, Software Engineer

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(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog to bring you information on other green efforts at Google)

On Friday we made our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project — two wind farms that generate 169.5 megawatts of power, enough to power more than 55,000 homes. These wind farms, developed by NextEra Energy Resources, harness power from one of the world’s richest wind resources in the North Dakota plains and use existing transmission capacity to deliver clean energy to the region, reducing the use of fossil fuels. Through this $38.8 million investment, we’re aiming to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy — in a way that makes good business sense, too.

To reach a clean energy future, we need three things: effective policy, innovative technology and smart capital. Through our philanthropic arm Google.org, we’ve been pushing for energy policies that strengthen the innovation pipeline, and we’ve been dedicating resources to developing new technologies, including making investments in early-stage renewable energy companies such as eSolar and AltaRock. Smart capital includes not only these early-stage company investments, but also dedicated funding for utility-scale projects. To tackle this need, we’ve been looking at investments in renewable energy projects, like the one we just signed, that can accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects.

A clear windy day at the Ashtabula II wind farm

We’re excited about this first project investment because it uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid. The turbines can continuously adjust the individual blade pitch angles to achieve optimal efficiency and use larger blades with 15 percent more swept area than earlier generations, allowing capture of even more wind energy for each turbine. The control systems for these wind farms are also advanced and dynamic, allowing for remote 24/7 monitoring and operation to ensure maximum turbine up-time and power production. A couple of us got a chance to climb 80 meters up one of the 113 turbines to see firsthand how the rotating blade motion goes through a gearbox to turn the generator that makes the electricity. The climb to the top also provided a great view of the entire wind farm (don’t worry — we all had harnesses and turned the turbine off!).

My colleague Matt takes a rest after the 80-meter climb

We look forward to finding more opportunities to invest in renewable energy projects that use the latest technologies to push the envelope for delivering low cost clean energy. We’ll let you know what we find.

Posted by Rick Needham, Green Business Operations Manager

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