As Google expands its commitment to alternative energy, company chairman Eric Schmidt calls for Internet freedom during a visit to North Korea.

Google I(Nasdaq: GOOG) said Wednesday it was investing $200 million in a Texas wind farm, the Internet search leader’s latest big bet on the future alternative energy.

The commitment to the Spinning Spur Wind Project announced Wednesday brings Google’s total investments in alternative energy to more than $1 billion. The company has backed 11 different projects with a combined capacity to produce 2 gigawatts of electricity – enough to power about 500,000 U.S. homes for a year.

Google has been pouring money into alternative energy since 2010 because it believes the investments will prove profitable as the demand for cleaner sources of power rises amid increasing concerns about the pollution caused by oil and coal.

The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., is consuming more power as it builds more data centers to run its Internet search engine and other online services used by more than 1 billion people throughout the world.

The Texas wind farm is located in Oldham County about 35 miles from Amarillo in the state’s panhandle section. The wind farm, developed by EDF Renewable Energy, can produce up to 161 megawatts of electricity.

North Korea Trip

On the other side of the world, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt called on North Korea to end its ban on Internet access after a visit to the totalitarian country with former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world,” Schmidt told reporters today at the Beijing airport after the visit to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. “The government has to do something — they have to make it possible for people to use the Internet, which the government in North Korea has not yet done. It is time now for them to start or they will remain behind.”

Richardson said North Korea is anxious to improve relations with the U.S. and is encouraged by recent statements by South Korea’s president-elect, Park Geun Hye. During her campaign, Park said she would be willing to meet with leader Kim Jong Un.

The four-day visit by Richardson and Schmidt was opposed by the Obama administration, which is seeking additional United Nations sanctions to censure North Korea for its long-range rocket launch last month. Opposition from China, North Korea’s biggest ally and trade partner, has stalled progress on punishing Kim’s regime for violating a UN ban on testing ballistic missile technology.

North Korea bans any infiltration of independent information. Kim, the Swiss-educated leader who is in his second year in power, has increasingly called for greater openness toward using modern technologies such as the Internet. Yet few of the country’s 24 million people can access the World Wide Web, and the government offers a domestic intranet service that features an information portal called Naenara.

Schmidt said that North Korea’s existing mobile-phone network, operated in a joint venture with Orascom Telecom Media & Technology Holding SAE, could be retooled to offer Internet access. There are about 1 million phones on the network, Schmidt said.

“It would be very easy for them to turn that on,” Schmidt said.