Google (GOOG) doesn't just want to rule the Internet -- it also wants to save the planet.

Earlier this week, Google announced a sweeping program that aims to wean the U.S. off of coal and oil for electricity generation in 22 years. Google.org estimates the cost of its Clean Energy 2030 proposal will be about $4.4 trillion, but will return a savings of $1 trillion over the life of the plan. Google said the plan can also create millions of green jobs.

“We can reduce energy costs, both at the gas pumps and at home,” Google said on its google.org blog. “We can improve our national security. And we can put a big dent in climate change." Google proposes to do that by reducing energy demand, developing renewable energy and reinventing the electric grid.

While Google isn’t the first company you would think of when talk turned to the environment, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet search giant has been pushing green initiatives for sometime.

Google, along with Intel (INTC), founded the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which is a nonprofit group created to promote the development and deployment of smart technologies that can improve the efficiency of a computer’s power delivery and reduce the energy consumed when a computer is in sleep mode.

Google also partnered with General Electric (GE) to develop the so-called smart grid, which will give consumers more energy choices -- whether it’s to buy renewable power or drive a plug-in car. This year alone, Google has invested $45 million in startup companies focused on wind, solar and geothermal technologies.

“Google is trying to invest for the better of the country,” said Clayton Moran, an analyst at Stanford Group. “You could make an argument that Google can benefit from more efficient energy systems, given they are a massive user of energy to power their search. But they are not a direct beneficiary of this project.”

So what does Google think has to happen in order for the country to be coal and oil independent by 2030?

Initially, Google said demand for energy has to be reduced by adopting technologies that let people do more with less. For instance, Climate Savers’ goal is to cut energy consumption by the equivalent of 10 to 20 coal-fired power plants by 2010, simply by developing technologies that make more computers efficient.

Efforts by state governments like in California, where there are aggressive building codes and efficiency standards, could also go a long way to reducing energy demand, said Google.

“Government can have a big impact on achieving greater efficiency,” Google said on the blog.  Google also thinks that homeowners would use less energy if they were better informed with in-home smart meters and real time pricing.

Aside from the low-hanging fruit of reducing demand for energy, Google believes there has to be a real effort to develop renewable energy that is cheaper than coal.

Google pointed to wind, solar, thermal and advanced geothermal as renewable energy technologies that are competitive with coal. Google is calling on the government to “dramatically” increase federal research and development on investment in clean energy and to enact measures that support the rapid deployment of clean tech.

“Tax credits for wind and solar have lapsed several times in the last 20 years, starving these nascent industries of the capital they need to truly enter the mainstream,” said Google. 

Finally, Google envisions a new electric grid that lets people drive gasless cars and cheaply recharge their vehicles. The smart grid would let people charge their cars when electric is cheap and could even make them some money by selling unused power back to the grid.

“Much of the technology in our current electrical grid was developed in the '60s and is wasteful and not very smart. We are partnering with GE to help accelerate the development of the smart grid and support building new transmission lines to harness our nation's vast renewable energy resources,” said the Google blog.