INTERVIEW-Google closing in on cheap renewable energy

*US government needs to do more research, take more risks

*Google engineers focused on solar thermal technology

By Peter Henderson

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif, June 9 (Reuters) - Google Inc (GOOG.O) is closing in on its goal of producing renewable energy at a price cheaper than coal, the company's so-called green energy czar, the engineer in charge of the project, said on Tuesday.

But the United States needs to raise government-backed research significantly and take much bigger risks if it wants to make alternative energy mainstream, executive Bill Weihl told Reuters in an interview.

Google, known for its Internet search engine, in late 2007 said it would invest in companies and do research of its own to produce affordable renewable energy -- at a price less than burning coal -- within a few years. The often-quirky company cast the move as a philanthropic effort to address climate change, but the work is done by a unit of the for-profit corporation, Google.org, and Google investors will profit from any breakthroughs. The story of its pursuit of cheap, clean energy became an overnight phenomenon, and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt conferred with U.S. President Barack Obama on economic revival and green jobs.

Weihl said the odds of success had gone up in the last year or so from a long shot to a real possibility of demonstrating working technology in a few years' time.

"It is even odds, more or less," he said. "In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there."