Bill Weihl, who is currently working on clean energy at Google, has indicated that the company is closing in on its goal of producing renewable energy at a price cheaper than coal.

In a report filed by Reuters, 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.

Solar thermal technology is one of the options, which Google has been keenly pursuing.

Weihl mentioned that the current focus is on “looking at ways of cheaply getting to much higher temperatures and also making the heliostats”. He added that some really interesting progress has made in the last six to nine months.