Yahoo! Gets $9.9 Million from DOE & Say Hello to Google Energy!

'Tis the season for grants! From Uncle Sam. The Department of Energy announced late yesterday that it had approved $47 million in grants to projects that "aim at increasing energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from data centers and IT facilities." Even more exciting? This will be matched with $70 million through private industry donations.

The biggest recipients of the grants include technology behemoths HP, IBM and internet player Yahoo, with the latter receiving the most allocated to a company: $9.9 million. SeaMicro, a Silicon Valley company focused on technology related to data networking and data center design, also received $9.3 million followed by HP, IBM and Alcatel-Lucent

In total, these grants will be spread across 14 projects with the goal being doubling energy efficiency data centers within five years.

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In other news, Google is entering the lucrative world of energy. And sustainability. After creating a subsidiary named Google Energy in December, the internet giant has applied for approval to buy and sell power. While indications of a new player in the energy trading marketplace isn't evident just yet, Google will most certainly be able to use this approval to offset power usage of its own operations, besides selling any surplus power from its other initiatives in renewable energy.