Google announced Tuesday its plans to spend millions on research and development in renewable energy in order to produce electricity cheaper than coal-fired plants.

The initiative, known as Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal, will be funded by Google.org, the Internet company’s philanthropic arm, and will initially focus on solar thermal, wind, and geothermal technologies. The goal is to build 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal “within years, not decades,” according to a statement.

“We've gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building data centers that lead the industry in efficiency,” said Google co-founder Larry Page in a statement. “We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating inexpensive renewable electricity at scale.”

Coal is one of the most common sources of energy worldwide. About 25 percent of total world energy comes from coal and about 40 percent of electricity is generated from it, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

But coal is also dirty—coal-fired plants are leading producers of greenhouse gases. Google said that making electricity produced from renewable energy cheaper than coal would be a key part of reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions.

Google also said cheaper energy sources would help reduce poverty worldwide while their investments in alternative energy would be profitable.

The Mountain View, California, company will not be the first to be seduced by the double whammy—good for the planet and the pocket book—of the clean tech sector. About 10 percent of all venture capital now goes to clean tech startups, and between $6.2 billion and $8.8 billion will be invested in North American clean tech venture rounds between 2006 and 2009, according to the CleanTech Group.

But Google—which would not specify exactly how much it intends to invest to combat coal—is also not entirely new to green initiatives. The company is working on energy efficiency technology to power and cool its data centers worldwide; it has installed solar panels at its headquarters with 1.6 megawatts of capacity; and it has invested in plug-in vehicle technology, among other efforts.